‘In Switzerland,’ said Jemma.
Fourteen
Spring was edging its green way through the countryside. Even the ancient Vanguard seemed to know this, for it produced several roaring spurts which, at times, swung the speedometer beyond the fifty-miles-an-hour mark.
‘Steady,’ cautioned Jemma. ‘If this falls to bits, it’s going to cost a fortune to have it cleared from the motorway.’
‘Hampshire,’ enthused Davies. ‘Look at the catkins.’
A great bruised cloud moved across the sun and soon it began to rain briskly. She held on to his arm above the elbow. ‘We’re on holiday,’ she breathed. ‘Just think, we’re on our first holiday together.’
‘Compulsory leave it’s called,’ corrected Davies. ‘In my case. Only one better than being suspended. Compulsory leave while the Metropolitan Police makes up its mind whether or not to kick me out of the force.’
‘If they do,’ she said decisively, ‘then I’ll pack up as well.’
‘We could come down to Hampshire,’ he said. ‘And grow catkins.’
She looked at her watch. ‘Eleven o’clock,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘What shall we do when we get there?’
‘I’m treading carefully,’ he said. ‘I can’t go around asking too many questions, acting like a copper. The Dorset police could really cook my goose, providing there’s a goose left.’
She pouted. ‘I didn’t mean that,’ she said. ‘I meant like walking together on the beach or sharing a bottle of wine.’
‘Ah, that as well,’ he said. ‘Both in fact.’
They reached the end of the motorway where the road by-passed Winchester and curved gradually west. The Hampshire fields with their reappearing rivers gave way to the New Forest brushland. They crossed into Dorset. Jemma said: ‘You’ll be very disappointed, won’t you, Dangerous, if none of this works out?’
‘Very,’ he nodded. ‘If there was no crime then I’m never going to find one, that’s for sure. I could go on raking old ashes for ever.’ They drove in silence until they reached Wimborne. ‘We keep finding disjoined pieces, don’t we?’ he said eventually. He was trying to reassure himself. ‘Every time something turns up, it adds something to it. Lofty Brock, for example, is now Billy Dobson.’ He looked at her sideways, beseechingly. ‘Don’t say that doesn’t mean he was murdered.’
‘I wasn’t going to,’ she assured quietly. ‘But it doesn’t.’ She half turned, consolingly touching his hand on the steering wheel. ‘You’ve been finding things, Dangerous,’ she said. ‘But they’re bits of history. Bits of crimes long ago, secrets and everything. But …’
‘But what? But I still haven’t discovered whether it was a murder much less who did it, if it was in the first place. Nor the motive – if there ever was a motive.’
‘That’s the nearest thing to double Dutch I’ve heard, even from you,’ she laughed.
He grinned at her. ‘When sober that is,’ he said. He looked out at the low, old Dorset roofs. ‘Let’s have a drink,’ he suggested. ‘They seem to keep sensible opening hours down here.’
The car was turned into the courtyard of a whitewashed inn with a powerful tower of a church rising beyond its roof. The engine died with a sigh of relief. Davies hurried from the driving seat and with massive courtesy opened the passenger door for Jemma. She was wearing a green sweater and slim white trousers. As they went into the bar, Jemma first, a man who was balancing across the floor with a full tankard let it slip in his fingers and slop over. The barman, his attention also fixed on Jemma, kept pulling the pump handle long after the glass beneath was brimming over. There were three other men in the room and they sat entranced. ‘They don’t see many girls in green sweaters down here,’ suggested Davies in a whisper.
‘Especially black girls,’ she whispered.
They advanced on the bar. ‘’Morning,’ said the barman, still looking at her. ‘Nice day for travelling.’
Jemma ordered a glass of wine, Davies had a pint of beer. ‘How did you know we were travelling?’ asked Davies.
‘I knew you weren’t from around here,’ said the barman. ‘I’d have noticed.’ He looked up uncertainly. ‘Deduction,’ he said. ‘I used to be a policeman. In London.’
‘Retired to peace and quiet, have you?’ said Davies easily. He took the drinks. ‘Not a lot of crime around here, is there?’
‘We have our share,’ said the man. Davies asked if he would like a drink and he accepted. ‘Across the back here …’ He nodded over his shoulder. ‘In the graveyard, there’s one of the great unsolved mysteries.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The burial place of the man they reckon was Jack-the-Ripper. The prime suspect. Montague John Druitt. Nobody will ever know now, of course. It’s too far gone.’
‘Some things are like that,’ said Davies.
In the late afternoon, they walked over the coastal hill, a chapel at its summit, the airs of spring all around them, puffing freshly as they climbed. Soon they were looking down on the humped roofs of the village and the yard of the inn where they were staying.
‘Did you see the lady’s face when we walked in together?’ laughed Jemma.
Davies was panting from the climb. He sat down clumsily on a shelf of rock protruding like old teeth from the hillside grass. ‘You are a bit of a pioneer,’ he told her.
She sat beside him, nudging him along the rock. ‘And see what I’ve found,’ she said. Again she laughed and they kissed, their arms flapping about each other. Then they sat and surveyed the distance. The far flank of the valley ascended to a newly leafing copse; a dog and a man walked towards it. ‘We should have brought Kitty,’ said Jemma.
‘We should,’ admitted Davies guiltily. ‘But he’d have had to share the room. And you know how he gets jealous.’
The sunshine was intermittent, sweeping over the vale and the village. They could hear a stream. Davies sniffed deeply. ‘Lovely,’ he said. ‘Sea air and cow dung.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ she agreed seriously. ‘I’m glad you brought me.’ She stood up and he did also.
‘Brought you,’ he said, wrapping his overcoat arms around her again. ‘You’ve brought me. I used to spend my holidays in the Cricklewood Snooker Hall.’ She laughed with him. Her arms uncircled his waist and their faces sidled to each other, his red nose touching the tip of her black nose. They both squinted inland as if to make sure no observer was far below. ‘Nobody looking,’ reported Davies. They kissed again deeply.
They walked up the short remainder of the hill, past the stark chapel, and found themselves looking out over widespread sea and land. Windy sunshine patterned the long sea, ruffling it, illuminating its corrugations. Waves rolled with heavy indolence against the remarkable landfall, the ten-mile curve of Chesil Bank. It travelled in an amazing arc, diminishing to a point miles east. Below them, the pebbled beach stood with casual confidence against the blunt rollers, breaking each at its final assault.
‘Listen,’ said Jemma. ‘You can hear the pebbles from here. Rattling as the sea comes in.’
Davies said: ‘I wonder where they found the body of this Swiss chap.’
At evening lights were lit at dispersed parts of the horizon and, only a little higher, there appeared a loitering star. ‘You can still hear the waves washing against the pebbles,’ said Jemma. They stood at the small upstairs window at the inn. Davies had his arm about her waist, rubbing his hand against her hipbone like a gun in a holster under her robe. She leaned languidly against him, her head lolling against his neck. A lamp burned behind them in the room, amber across the bed.
‘I think we’ve been noticed hereabouts, Dangerous,’ she said.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised. People tend to be nosy in these places.’
‘If you want to attract attention, take a black girl to the English seaside off-season,’ she murmured.
‘Especially if you’re the wrong side of fifty, and the wrong side of twelve stone, and the aforementioned black girl is exc
essively beautiful,’ he added. He turned towards her and kissed her. She reached and drew the curtains. ‘I’m not doing a show for the fishing fleet,’ she said.
She had brought him a present, a striped silk dressing-gown, in which he now stood before the mirror in the door of the dark old wardrobe that leaned towards him with the list of the ancient floor. He posed first one way then another, pushing his thick white leg through the divide in the garment. Jemma lay across the bed.
‘There’s no doubt,’ smirked Davies, ‘that I do have a modicum of style.’
Smiling, she said: ‘You’re sensational.’
‘On the other hand,’ he went on, striking a further attitude. ‘How this is going to look with the flannel pyjamas remains in doubt.’
‘You’re not wearing any,’ she told him firmly. ‘I’m not coming away with a man who packs flannel pyjamas.’
‘No such conditions were mentioned before we set out,’ he said, studying the slim brown leg that had slipped naked from below her robe. ‘I know your sort, miss …’ he advanced on the bed. ‘Get a man to take you somewhere exotic and then play hard to get.’ He sat on the edge of the bed and began stroking her stomach.
‘I’m not hard to get, Dangerous,’ she told him peacefully. ‘You know how easy I am.’
Her long fingers went up his thigh below his robe. He regarded her seriously. ‘You’re going to spoil your dinner,’ he forecast.
‘It gives me an appetite.’ She moved over on the big dimpled bed and he lay beside her. ‘This place is probably haunted,’ he said, looking at the beamed ceilings.
‘You’ll be haunted if you don’t stop fooling about,’ she threatened quietly.
He rolled against her, feeling her long, soft form fold into the knots and crevices of his everyday body. ‘’Tis a night for smugglers,’ he muttered hoarsely in a grating dialect. ‘“Brandy for the parson, baccy for the clerk.”’
‘You know that?’ she said, opening her eyes.
‘Only one I do know,’ he confessed. ‘“Five and twenty ponies trotting through the dark” … I had to write it out a hundred times at school for letting off in the literature class.’
She pushed her nose under his armpit. ‘Do you want a fuck or a pantomime?’ she asked.
‘Some of both if you’ve got them,’ he answered. He kissed her on the shoulder and around and about the breasts.
‘That’s more like it,’ she said. ‘I was ready to go home.’
‘Don’t,’ he said gently, ‘go home.’
He was getting much better at it. After years of neglect and indifferent company, he had rediscovered the uniqueness. She had also taught him the fun. He eased the robe away so that the glowing stomach and soft pubis lay exposed. ‘You’re like an animal,’ she smiled as he put his mouth on her skin again.
‘A tortoise,’ he mumbled.
‘Perhaps,’ she said into his eyes which at that moment had risen in front of her face. ‘There’s a lot to be said for taking your time.’
He took his, and hers. As they lay against each other she said, her eyes closed: ‘There are times, Dangerous, when I feel that I’m just not decent.’
‘Thank God for that,’ he muttered.
It was an hour before she left the soft, lumpy bed, sliding out to go to the bathroom. He was dozing but he knew it would be rewarding to open his eyes to watch her walk naked across the room. It was. She returned and arranged her robe loosely about her. He half levered himself up in the bed. ‘I can’t sleep without my flannel pyjamas,’ he said.
‘It’s a sort of flannel pyjamas place,’ she admitted, looking around the shadowed room, the ponderous and lopsided furniture, the flowered pitcher and bowl on the wash-stand. She touched each of them. ‘Even having a bathroom seems to spoil it.’
She took the jug to the bathroom and, with mounting pleasure, he heard her filling it. She had a studied expression when she returned and set the jug on the stand and the bowl on the floor. ‘Out you get,’ she ordered quietly.
Davies left the bed. ‘Kneel down,’ she added without looking at him. ‘I even found a flannel.’
As she washed him, never lifting her head from what she was doing, she said: ‘Do you think the people here think it’s odd you being with a black girl?’
He touched her dark and lovely head, running his fingers from her hair down to her ear and on to her neck and shoulders. ‘I’m trying to keep it quiet,’ he said throatily. ‘They’ll all want one.’
They had dinner at a rocky table near the window of the inn. It was so unstable they played a game of see-sawing it from one side to the other. The plump woman who served them said: ‘He was meaning to fix that afore he went and died.’ She frowned, apparently annoyed at the omission, then said: ‘Where you be coming from then?’ An hour before, as she served the soup, she had spent a measurable time noticing Jemma’s lack of a wedding ring.
‘London,’ answered Davies amiably. ‘North-West.’
‘Oh,’ said the woman, looking at Jemma. ‘You as well, miss?’
‘London, North-West,’ confirmed Jemma sweetly. ‘It was a wonderful dinner.’
‘We do our best,’ said the woman. ‘He’s been gone five years, but we do our best.’
She served them coffee and went away. Davies rocked the table again. ‘I think he’s trying to get a message through,’ he said.
‘That’s why he never fixed it,’ she smiled.
After the coffee, they went under the low beams into the bar. It was crowded. As they went in, fifty faces turned on them. ‘’Evening,’ said Davies, genially and generally. Someone made space at the bar. Many of the faces were red with weather, eyes blackened but bright, heads apparently balancing on roll-neck jerseys. ‘A brandy,’ said Davies to the girl behind the bar. ‘And a Cointreau.’
He heard the word ‘Cointreau’ being passed about the room. They stood at the bar and the room settled to its former conviviality, the men, however, moving at short intervals, one taking the place of another, like a country dance, so that each could have an uninterrupted view of Jemma. With her customary, professional ease she fell into conversation with them. A reddened man with cracked lips and a curtain of whiskers stood next to Davies. ‘Sun went down a bit early today,’ he remarked.
‘Oh, did it? How was that?’
‘Too early for I, believe me.’ His voice was broad Dorset. ‘This season you keep looking for the light dusks. Get more done.’ With a touch of surprise he looked at his empty beer glass. ‘You don’t start on the drinking so early,’ he said.
‘Like another?’ asked Davies. He began reaching for his money.
‘That be very civil,’ said the man. He held up a hand like a placard. ‘But I won’t … until we been rightly introduced.’ He jabbed his hand towards Davies. ‘Jim Fisher,’ he growled. ‘Fisher by name, fisher by trade.’
‘You are?’ said Davies, accepting the handshake. ‘In that case, my name ought to be Agent, but it’s Davies.’
‘A secret agent?’ asked the man, his gnarled eyes widening. ‘Is that it?’
‘Insurance,’ corrected Davies. ‘Insurance agent.’
‘I see.’ He swung his glass towards Davies. ‘Ale is mine,’ he said.
‘I think I’ll go on the ale too,’ said Davies. ‘One brandy is enough.’ He asked the girl, who was eyeing Fisher uncertainly, for two pints. He leaned sideways and asked Jemma who was at the centre of a clutch of fishermen.
‘No, darling,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘We’re discussing single-parent families.’
‘Where did you come on her?’ asked Fisher innocuously. ‘Africa?’
‘North-West London,’ said Davies.
‘Don’t see many dark ones in these parts,’ said Fisher regretfully. ‘I likes ’em myself.’ He accepted the drink. ‘Is it marine?’ he asked.
‘Marine?’
‘Insurance.’
‘Oh, I see. Well in this instance, yes, I suppose. But not generally.’
‘What is this in
stance then?’
Davies took a deep drink while he thought about it. Eventually he said: ‘It’s about a Swiss chap whose body was found on the beach here.’
‘I reckoned it might be. Don’t often go an’ get drowned, the Swiss, do they?’
‘You don’t associate them with water,’ Davies agreed. ‘Unless it’s in Lake Geneva. What made you think that might be the reason I’m here? I could have come down to collect sea shells.’
Fisher laughed mysteriously. ‘There’s nothin’ folks around here don’t know afore long,’ he said. ‘When you was up on chapel ’ill this afternoon, you was speakin’ about it to your dark lady. The wind carries voices easy in these parts. The old woman dustin’ in the chapel, she ’eard you.’
‘It’s certainly a funny business,’ said Davies sagely. ‘Six months before the body was identified.’
The fisherman shook his head. ‘By the time the sea ’ad swelled him up and he’d been thrown on the Chesil Bank back and fore, ’is own mother wouldn’t ’ave knowd him.’ He leaned over the bar. ‘Nance,’ he called. ‘Get the Gazette there.’
The girl paused in washing glasses and passed the newspaper to him. ‘’Tis all in here,’ he said, unfolding it. ‘The Inquest. Still, I ’spect you know all about that.’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Davies, leaning forward. ‘But I’d still like to see what it says. You never know …’
‘There,’ said Fisher. ‘And the picture of ’im. Sigmund Dietrich. What a name.’
‘Swiss,’ shrugged Davies, taking the newspaper. ‘Well-known Swiss name.’ He studied the picture. ‘He looks Swiss.’
‘Sounds more German.’
‘Well it does. But there are subtle differences.’ He had spread the front page. ‘“Mystery of Chesil Bank Body Solved”,’ Davies read aloud. He sensed Jemma’s half-turn before she prudently turned back to her discussion group. ‘No papers, no identification,’ murmured Davies. ‘Well, we knew that.’
‘How come they didn’t miss him in Switzerland?’ asked Fisher shrewdly. ‘’Is family?’
‘Oh, they did,’ said Davies, reading quickly. ‘But everyone thought he had gone to the Far East. His family and the firm he worked for.’
The Complete Dangerous Davies Page 43