The Complete Dangerous Davies

by Leslie Thomas

  He nodded. ‘Who told you?’

  ‘No need for anyone to tell,’ she said shaking her head. ‘Anything like that gets around like wildfire. I bet everyone in this room knows.’

  He sighed and then said: ‘Maybe that’s not a bad thing. Maybe they’ll start telling me things.’

  ‘They won’t be able to wait,’ she forecast. ‘They’ll all have their opinions and their theories.’

  ‘Some of them might even know something,’ he said. He looked into her plump face. ‘What did you think of him? I might as well start with an objective opinion.’

  Her expression filled up. ‘Oh, Dangerous, he was a nasty man. The most terrible turd, if you’ll forgive the expression.’

  After four days Mod shamefacedly announced that he was homesick. Davies feigned surprise. It was a bright morning, the window full of sky and the sky full of wind; waves sharp and white at their fringes were running exuberantly up the slope of the beach. ‘You’re homesick?’ Davies whispered. ‘Homesick for Willesden?’

  ‘I can’t explain it,’ agreed Mod. His face dropped and then he turned and swept his hand across the view from the window. ‘But all this fresh air has been too much for me. I miss the Babe In Arms, Dangerous. I miss the library, my studies …’ He regarded his companion realising the next excuse would be dumbfounding. ‘I even miss our lodgings and … everybody …’ His hooded eyes rose guiltily. ‘… Even Mrs Fulljames.’

  Davies patted his arm as one might to a dear one who had revealed a dread illness. ‘Well … it’s what you are used to, I suppose. Bournemouth has been a bit of a culture shock.’

  Mod anticipated the next question: ‘I’ll take the dog back, if you like. He’ll be all right with me.’

  ‘On the train?’

  ‘Kitty will be fine. He’ll behave,’ repeated Mod without much conviction.

  Davies saw them off in a taxi and turned a little disconsolately back into the hotel. ‘They’ve gone off then,’ said Bertie the hall porter. ‘But you’re staying.’

  Everyone knew why he was staying. Bertie said: ‘I’ve got all the newspaper reports if you want to see them. About Mr Dulciman.’

  Davies felt as though a small, difficult door had been half opened. ‘You have?’ he said. ‘I’d certainly like to.’

  ‘I’ll show you now,’ offered Bertie. ‘It’s my elevenses. I’ll make you a cup of coffee and leave you with the stuff if you like. It might help.’

  Curiously, he locked the door of his glass booth although there was nothing in it. ‘I kept them out of interest,’ he explained. ‘Nothing like that ever happened to this hotel before.’ Surveying the lobby, mundane and musty, he let out a brief snort. ‘They’re always talking about getting some publicity for the place. Well they certainly got it then.’

  Bertie unhurriedly led the way down the stairs to his basement room. ‘It was just the local papers at first, then the big boys got interested. Television, everything. When his shoes turned up they showed them on one of those Crimewatch programmes.’

  ‘Strange about his shoes,’ observed Davies.

  ‘It was too. I took them to the police.’

  Davies stopped on the stairs. ‘You found them, Bertie?’

  Bertie carried on to the bottom before turning around. ‘Well, in a way. Some lad came up and said he’d found them down by the sea. He was only a kid but he was bright and he thought he should tell somebody, although he didn’t know anything about Mr Dulciman.’

  ‘A pair of shoes floating about looked suspicious,’ nodded Davies. ‘One shoe and he would not have bothered. And you handed them to the police.’

  The porter unlocked his door and let Davies into the crammed room. It seemed he locked and unlocked everything possible. ‘I showed them to Mrs Dulciman first,’ he said. ‘But I recognised them anyway. Good shoes from London. Brown and stitched. I would have known them anywhere. When I showed them to Mrs Dulciman she told me I should take them to the police.’

  ‘She was upset, I expect.’

  The statement seemed to give Bertie doubts. ‘No, not really. She just sort of stared at them and said they were his all right.’

  He sat Davies in one of the heavy old armchairs, then went to his alcove kitchen and began to prepare the coffee. Davies heard the kettle whistle and Bertie’s head appeared around the door. ‘She did a funny thing, though,’ he said. ‘Now I come to think of it.’

  ‘What was that?’

  The porter walked into the room rubbing his chin. ‘I was holding the shoes and she just reached over and tied the laces up. They were hanging loose, soaking wet, and she tied them in bows. Then she said to me: “You must take them to the police, please Bertie.”’

  ‘People do odd things at moments of stress,’ Davies called to him when he had returned to pour the coffee. ‘All sorts of little bits and pieces come out of the backs of their minds.’

  ‘I know a woman’, said Bertie, ‘who knew her husband was dying when he told her to treat herself to a tumble drier.’

  They sat drinking the coffee. Davies said: ‘What did you think of Mr Dulciman, Bertie? Just between ourselves.’

  The porter pursed his lips as if making an effort to be fair. ‘Not my type, Mr Davies,’ he said decisively. ‘Very arrogant, used to strut around. Never walked, strutted. Aloof is the word.’

  Davies said: ‘What did he do? What did he occupy himself with? He was out most of the time, I gather.’

  Bertie ruminated again. ‘Well, he was supposed to be retired. But, you’re right, sir, he was not indoors very much. He went out every day more or less regular.’

  ‘Do you have any idea, any theory, of what might have happened to him?’

  The porter seemed surprised but pleased to be consulted. ‘I’ve given it a bit of thought, of course. Those shoes, Mr Davies. Why only the shoes, I ask myself? If you’re going to walk out to sea to end it all, why take your shoes off? You drown better with them on.’

  ‘You think they were just left purposely to make it look as if that was what had happened?’

  ‘That’s what I think,’ confirmed Bertie. ‘Those remains that was brought out of the bay, they wasn’t him. I never have believed that.’ He hesitated as if undecided whether to go on.

  ‘Go on,’ encouraged Davies.

  Bertie appeared troubled. ‘I’ve never said this to anyone,’ he went on slowly, ‘because it didn’t seem to have any direct connection to the case. No bearing. And I didn’t want to upset Mrs Dulciman.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘But I saw him one day about six months before he vanished. He was with a youngish woman in a car. Up on the East Cliff.’

  ‘Ah, a love affair.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. The woman was crying her eyes out.’

  On Friday evening Jemma telephoned, sounding pleased. ‘Dangerous, I’m coming down to see you tomorrow. We can have a whole weekend together.’

  ‘How many of us?’ he inquired cautiously.

  ‘By myself,’ she promised. ‘We can take Kitty for walks on the beach. Mod can come back to Willesden if he likes. I bet he’ll be getting homesick by now.’

  There was a silence. Then Davies spelled it out: ‘Mod should be back there now. And Kitty. They left here two days ago, Jemma.’

  There was another pause. ‘That’s ominous,’ she said eventually in a low voice. ‘They’ve not arrived back here yet. I was in the Babe In Arms at lunchtime. I had to go to court. Nobody mentioned that they had seen Mod. We were laughing about him and the dog and the hot-dog stand, so somebody would have said if he had been in.’

  ‘They might be at the house,’ Davies said. ‘Mod may be ill. Perhaps he had a hard journey with the dog.’

  ‘He could be in shock.’

  ‘Well, you know Kitty leads him a dance. They were all right when they left here. I put them in a taxi for the station. I’d better call the house.’

  ‘I’d do it from here,’ said Jemma dubiously, ‘but you never know who is going to pick
up the phone. It might be Doris.’

  ‘I don’t particularly want to ring either,’ he said, ‘if I ask for Mod and he hasn’t turned up. And I certainly don’t want Doris answering either.’

  Jemma said: ‘Listen, I’m going to Kensal Rise to sort out a kid who keeps running away. I’ll go in the Babe and ask. I’ll call you in about an hour. Stay in the hotel.’

  ‘I won’t move,’ he said. ‘I’m very worried about my dog.’ He went thoughtfully into the bar. He had already eaten dinner and now he sat reading the local evening paper but he could not get engrossed in complaints about exorbitant local car-parking fines nor that another late goal had beaten The Cherries. It was almost an hour before she rang. Mildred came into the bar and made a mime of holding a telephone to her ear. He followed and went into the booth in the lobby.

  ‘He’s back,’ said Jemma breathlessly. ‘What a relief. He’s just got here apparently.’

  ‘Is Kitty all right?’

  ‘As far as I can gather Kitty is fine. But Mod is on the edge of a breakdown. I haven’t seen him myself so I don’t know what it’s all about. I’ve left a message at the Babe that he’s to call you as soon as he comes in.’ Her voice softened. ‘Don’t worry, Dangerous. It’s nothing serious, I’m sure.’

  ‘They’ve taken two days on a four-hour trip,’ pointed out Davies.

  ‘Well, they’re okay. I’ll be down there by lunchtime tomorrow. How are you getting on with Mr Dulciman?’

  ‘He’s still missing, presumed drowned,’ said Davies. ‘But a few niblets are turning up. I’ll tell you when I see you. I’ll wait for Mod to ring.’

  It was a further hour. He went into the residents’ lounge and alone watched moodily as a Los Angeles television cop, with a choice of blondes, cleared up a multiple murder between coition and commercials.

  He had left the door ajar and Mildred’s pale round face appeared once more. ‘Phone, Dangerous,’ she said. She stood still and regarded him. ‘You look ever so solitary there.’

  He smiled at her. ‘These cops on television,’ he said. ‘They’re either picking up clues or picking up women.’

  ‘It’s not like that, is it,’ she said.

  ‘Not for me,’ he smiled. He patted her on the broad arm as he went towards the phone. ‘Is Jemma coming down?’ she asked suddenly. She knew because she had been eavesdropping.

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh. That will be nice.’

  He went into the box. ‘Oh God, Dangerous, have I had a bloody time,’ Mod moaned.

  ‘Where have you been with my dog?’ asked Davies evenly.

  ‘Where haven’t I been. Dangerous, don’t ever ask me to take that animal anywhere again. There’s a limit.’

  ‘I’ll make a note. Is he all right?’

  ‘He’s fine. Sleeping like a child. It’s me that’s shattered.’

  ‘Sorry about that,’ said Davies composed now that he knew Kitty was safe. ‘What happened?’ He sensed Mod’s hesitation. ‘I’ll pay you for the phone.’

  ‘Oh, thanks. This call is the least of the expenses.’

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Hinton Admiral, Southampton, Southampton Airport,’ Mod recited. ‘Winchester, Lower Dever, Basingstoke, Frensham Ponds …’

  ‘You were supposed to go straight home. Waterloo, Willesden.’

  ‘You should have told your dog,’ grumbled Mod. ‘We got on the train and everything was all right for a while, and then he tried to get this man’s chocolate bar. He was on the man’s lap, for Christ’s sake. There was a terrible scene. The bloke called the guard, the guard was knocked over by Kitty, and we were ejected at this wayside station, Hinton Admiral …’

  ‘Kitty was just excited,’ said Davies mildly. ‘Being on a train.’

  ‘The excitement spread,’ returned Mod dolefully. ‘We waited an hour and just to keep him occupied, I took him for a bit of a walk. That was when he had this woman off her bike.’

  ‘That’s not good news,’ conceded Davies.

  ‘Fortunately she was a dog lover and once we’d got her and the bike more or less straightened out she went off without a lot of fuss.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘Then we got on a local train to Southampton and that was without incident. Kitty must have been tired by all the activity and he went to sleep. We changed at Southampton but by the time we got to Southampton Airport Station he had peed all over the floor. I just crept off the train, making out I hadn’t noticed. But it was swirling around people’s feet and the smell …’

  ‘He’s a dog,’ Davies pointed out. ‘Dogs’ water does smell.’

  ‘By this time I’m wanting to pee myself but I couldn’t go because I would have had to take the dog. Next time, try and get something a bit smaller, like an Afghan.’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ promised Davies. ‘What next?’

  ‘Things took a turn for the worse,’ intoned Mod. ‘Serious. He got off the lead and ran from the platform and went tearing through the damned airport which is right next door to the station. He got over the fence and went haring across the grass and then the runway …’

  ‘Oh, shit,’ breathed Davies.

  ‘Oh shit, indeed,’ echoed Mod. ‘Police, security men, ground staff, women, the lot, chasing him. They wanted to shoot him, Dangerous.’

  ‘They didn’t!’

  ‘They did. And by this time I was all for it, believe me.’

  ‘I left that dumb animal in your care,’ accused Davies.

  ‘I stopped them shooting him in the end. Somehow I managed to get on a bus. I didn’t care where it was going. I just wanted to get away from the place. Kitty seemed to like the bus but it only goes to this village, Lower Dever, and that’s as far as it went. It was dark by now. It had taken all day. I’d had nothing to eat …’

  Davies sniffed down the phone. ‘Neither had Kitty.’

  ‘He had the man’s chocolate bar.’

  ‘Well, that’s not much. What did you do then?’

  ‘Found a bed-and-breakfast place. I was a jangling wreck by this time. There were some children in the house and they loved the dog. He let them pull him all over the place. I very nearly left him there.’

  ‘I’m glad you didn’t,’ said Davies sombrely.

  ‘Well, I was seriously thinking of it,’ admitted Mod. ‘Just asking them to keep him while I went and got help. Bed and breakfast was ten pounds fifty, by the way. And two pounds for Kitty.’

  ‘Did he get breakfast?’

  ‘He got breakfast.’

  ‘What then?’

  He heard Mod sigh. ‘Then I decided to get a bus to Basingstoke. Kitty seemed to be more at home on buses.’

  ‘And he was?’

  ‘Loved it. Loved it so much he tried to get on top of the driver. He very nearly caused a crash, Dangerous. The man was trying to control the bus and the dog was all over him. It was horrifying.’

  ‘So you got off the bus.’

  ‘They made us. I tried walking the rest of the way to Basingstoke but it was miles. My feet wouldn’t go any further. Kitty was tugging me along. Then this chap, farmer type, stopped and we got a lift. Kitty was in the back seat with me and he leaned over and took a bite out of the man’s hat. So that was that.’

  Davies said: ‘Don’t tell me any more. I’ve heard enough. You’re back there now anyway.’

  ‘Yes. We got back,’ replied Mod dolefully. ‘It cost another night’s bed and breakfast. Then I thought I would try the train again. But he howled … Jesus, have you heard your dog howl?’

  ‘Of course I’ve heard him howl,’ muttered Davies testily. ‘He does it when he’s upset.’

  ‘He upset the whole train. Howling, loud as anything and he wouldn’t stop. The train was packed as well. It was terrible. They put us in the guard’s van. And I had to sit with him while he howled.’

  At the end of the conversation Davies put the phone down and dejectedly went back into the lounge where the Los Angeles cops had now been
replaced on television by an alternative comedy show. He sat glumly watching. He did not detect Mildred’s approach until she sat heavily on the arm of the chair.

  ‘Funny?’ she asked nodding at the screen.

  ‘Not that I can tell,’ he answered.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Oh, that Mod … he’s taken two days and two nights to get back to home with Kitty …’

  ‘What did he do, walk?’

  ‘Quite a lot of the way, apparently.’

  ‘Tell me … no, wait. Do you want a drink, Dangerous?’ she whispered. ‘I’ve got the keys.’

  ‘Oh all right, love.’ His eyes came up. ‘I’ll have a scotch.’

  ‘Good idea. So will I.’

  She went to the shuttered bar and unlocked the door. She emerged with a bottle of whisky and two glasses.

  ‘You drink scotch?’ he asked as she returned to the chair. She sat on the arm and he took the bottle from her and opened it. ‘Put this on my bill,’ he said.

  ‘I will not,’ she said firmly. ‘Let them pay for it. I do enough unpaid overtime.’ She regarded the level of whisky in her glass. They toasted each other with two mutters and two tight smiles. She made a face as she took the first swallow of raw scotch and shook her hair fiercely as though to dispatch it. ‘Went down the wrong way,’ she excused herself. She pushed her shoulder against him in the chair. He leaned forward and turned the television off. ‘Tell me about Mod and Kitty,’ she said.

  He began to laugh silently, shaking his head, and recounted the journey as Mod had described it. She began to giggle. She took the bottle from him and poured two more big drinks.

  When the story was ended she said sadly: ‘I really enjoyed that, Dangerous. It was funnier than the box. It was like listening to a story. My dad used to tell me stories.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Davies.

  ‘At home? Oh, everything changed. It all seems all right, then you hear them rowing in the middle of the night. I thought they were going to kill each other. It frightened the hell out of me. He didn’t used to drink much but then he started and he made up for lost time. She pushed him down some stairs in the end. Concrete stairs.’