‘What happened?’ said Davies again.
‘It killed him.’
‘Christ.’
‘Exactly, Christ. I was only about twelve and I had to tell the police that I saw him fall down when he was drunk. To back up my mother. Fat lot of good it did me. A couple of months and she was off with some man, and I’ve never seen her from that day to this.’
‘You haven’t had a lot of luck, have you,’ he said. ‘What with your boyfriend …’
‘No I haven’t, I suppose. When I say “it’s just my luck” I really mean it.’
He thought she was going to cry. ‘I think it’s time we put the bottle away,’ he observed. She handed it to him and replacing the stopper, he took it back to the bar, taking the keys from her and locking the door. Then he guided her towards the lobby.
The ungainly young woman and the shambling man climbed the stairs together. When they reached the landing she turned and pressed herself to him, her eyes full of tears. ‘You’ll be all right, will you,’ he said.
‘Take me to my room, Dangerous. Just to the door.’
They went stumbling along a corridor until they reached a low white door at the end. ‘This is it,’ she said. ‘Home sweet home. I have to duck my head to get in.’
She pursed her lips and he kissed her gently and briefly.
‘Good night, Mildred,’ he said.
‘And you, Dangerous. Good night. I hope you find Mr Dulciman. Or what’s happened to him.’
Eight
Bournemouth looked very nearly like Rio that night; almost balmy despite the time of the year, the sea luminous and docile, the land lit with lamps.
They sat at the window in the Ritz Hotel, on the clifftop. ‘I’ve never seen you look so smart, Dangerous,’ she whispered.
‘Oh, I can when I want. I’m a chameleon I am. Most of the gear I normally wear is disguise, you know. I can’t walk around Willesden done up like a dog’s dinner.’
They were drinking coffee and brandy. ‘Why did she tell you, do you think?’ she asked.
‘Mildred. About her old man being pushed down the stairs? I don’t know. Maybe she’s been waiting for years to tell someone. Telling that lie to the police is probably the only thing she’s done in her life that she’s quietly proud of.’
Jemma regarded him quizzically. ‘In an unofficial way she was telling the police – you. Owning up.’
He grunted. ‘Could have been. But her secret is safe with me. I’ve got enough on my plate without going back years to find out whether some woman in Newcastle pushed her drunken mate down some stairs. And then disappeared forever.’
‘At least you’re getting to know your way around,’ she said. ‘Any ideas?’
‘None of them valid,’ he said. ‘I thought the press cuttings might have something.’
‘Fancy the porter keeping them.’
‘Biggest thing that’s ever happened in his life.’
‘That hotel seems full of people that nothing ever happened to.’
‘Well, something happened to Mr Dulciman, that’s for certain. Mildred hated him. Bitterly. He was not a popular guest. He was arrogant, overbearing, all the things that people really hate.’
‘What about Mrs Dulciman. Did she really hate him?’
‘They were all right, she says, when they lived in London, but the minute they came down to Bournemouth, his attitude changed. They ended up despising each other.’
‘Something happened.’
‘Seems like it. It may have been he was upset at getting on in life, having to retire. People do, you know.’
‘It’s like they’re blaming someone for their age,’ she agreed.
‘Or there could have been another reason. He seems to have had a mistress, perhaps more than one. There were dealings with women. About six months before he disappeared Bertie saw him in a car on the East Cliff with a young woman. She was crying.’
He picked up the menu and almost absently began to make a list, writing between the courses. ‘Vernon Dulciman, aged sixty-two. Last seen on the evening of 14 September 1988. He was at the Moonlighters Club, one of his regular haunts. He had left the hotel about eight. Phineas, the man with the one leg, told me Dulciman left the club about eleven to go home. He had been drinking scotch. Mrs Dulciman did not wait up for him. She went to bed and she did not miss him until the next morning. And she never saw him again.’
‘And his shoes were found by the edge of the sea.’
‘By a boy. He brought them up to Bertie.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. Oh? Who the boy was, God knows. His name does not appear in the press stories nor the report of the inquest. Bertie says he doesn’t know and the only place I’m going to find out is in the police records.’
‘And that’s difficult.’
‘Very. I can hardly breeze up to the Bournemouth police station and say I’m a copper from London doing a bit of moonlighting. I could get it easily enough on the computer from the Willesden end, making out it was part of something I was doing officially. But if someone wanted to know why, I’d be right in it.’
‘They were Mr Dulciman’s shoes?’
‘No doubt about that. But there’s a question mark against the bones in the sea. It was a male roughly the same size, but it could have been anyone. And he had no teeth, the one sure way of identifying people who turn up in bits and pieces.’
He looked at the list he had written on the menu, glanced guiltily towards the head waiter, and folded it into his inside pocket.
‘But who could have sent his teeth to Mrs Dulciman?’
‘How about Mrs Dulciman?’ he replied simply.
‘You’re joking!’
‘Why did they suddenly turn up now? He’s been gone five years and suddenly his gnashers appear.’
‘Just when you have been told about the case.’
‘And decided not to take it on. It was either someone who was aware that she had asked me to get involved and sent them as a sort of tease. … A variation on the old returning-to-the-scene-of-the-crime syndrome. … Or it was the old lady herself sent them to give me an extra push, to make me decide to take the thing on in spite of myself. The package was stuck with sealing wax.’
‘The sort of thing she might use.
‘Or others in this town. It’s a sealing wax sort of place.’
‘Where do we go from here?’
‘Back to bed, hopefully,’ he smiled at her.
She touched his wrist. ‘Apart from that. With the case.’
‘Well, I’d like to have a chat with Nola Cloudsley-Clive, the dotty one who bashes bread to the gulls with a tennis racquet. But first I think I ought to see if I can get something out of a man named Pengelly, the private detective Mrs Dulciman got on the case.’
‘You won’t be able to tell him you’re a police officer,’ she said. ‘All you can say is you’re another private investigator.’
‘Or a relative with a bee in his bonnet,’ added Davies. ‘We’ll have to see which one he will swallow.’
The address in the telephone directory for Pengelly Associates, Private Investigators, was in Boscombe. On the Monday afternoon, after Jemma had gone, Davies got a bus and alighted at Shore Road. On one side of the street were old-fashioned houses and shops, descending to the beach. On the other, brick streets led one from another. The entrance was at the side of a greengrocer’s shop. He went up some dusty stairs to a bare landing upon which was a single door paned with opaque glass. There was a blocked-off window with a dead and dust-covered mouse on the sill. There was a plaque with ‘Pengelly Associates’ written on it beneath which was pinned a square of paper. ‘Apply upstairs.’
Davies retraced his slow steps along the landing and climbed another flight. There was an identical door, this time with a light behind it. Hearts were painted on the middle panel and the words ‘Goodtime Escort Agency’.
He was still taking this in when the door opened and a sly-looking man in his thirties came out. He was almos
t bald, a few strands of hair stretched across his head. His eyes were red. ‘Did you want something?’
‘Er … yes … an escort,’ said Davies.
‘It’s done on the phone,’ responded the man but less aggressively. ‘Customers don’t call here.’
‘I didn’t know. I haven’t done this before.’
‘You’d better come in,’ said the man cautiously. He still looked disgruntled but reluctant to turn down business. ‘I’m Pengelly,’ he said and led the way into the tight, grubby office, with a desk and a chair, with another chair piled with yellowing newspapers. He looked at Davies as if wondering whether he was worth a seat but then put the newspapers on the floor. ‘Have a chair,’ he said. He sat behind the desk. His back was to the grimy window framing the grimy sky. Illumination came from a single overhung light. On the wall was a calendar showing February and a naked woman on a donkey. ‘You need an escort,’ said the man.
‘I’d like one,’ answered Davies.
The man seemed to miss the point ‘Clients usually phone,’ he said again. ‘We don’t have personal callers.’
‘Well, I didn’t know whether it would be all right,’ Davies told him. ‘Whether I’d be acceptable.’
The man looked up with a slow scorn. ‘They’re not particular, most of my girls,’ he said. ‘As long as you’ve got the dosh.’
‘What does it cost?’ said Davies. ‘I’ve got no idea.’
The man studied him. ‘A hundred quid,’ he said firmly. ‘For that you get to go home with the girl as well.’
‘As well as what?’
‘Well, escorting her. Taking her out somewhere. Then you can have the other. You’ll have to give the girl something extra.’
‘It works out expensive.’
‘It depends what you want,’ replied the man impatiently. He seemed to think that Davies might change his mind so he quickly pulled a plastic photo album onto the desk and opened it. He swivelled it around so that Davies could view the photographs. Two young girls were on the first page, no more than eighteen, Davies thought, plain girls trying to look coquettish, their mouths open and their tongues slightly protruding. ‘They do a double,’ said the man.
‘Twice as much?’ asked Davies.
‘We could come to some arrangement,’ said Pengelly. ‘I could knock a bit off, I expect. I’m not greedy.’
‘But I’d have to take both of them out?’ queried Davies.
‘Of course. You have to talk to them.’
He turned the page. An older woman in a swollen sweater smiled artificially. ‘More your type, perhaps,’ suggested the man. ‘She’s been around for a while but she’s good. And she’s very presentable, clean to look at.’
Davies sniffed. ‘Any more?’
‘I can’t be here all day,’ complained the man. ‘I’m busy.’
Davies said mildly, ‘I expect you are. All right. The last one, the one who looks clean. She’ll do.’
There was another moment’s hesitation. ‘It’s just for yourself is it?’ asked the man.
‘Yes, just me.’
‘Right, I’ll give her a buzz.’ He looked up. ‘Would you mind stepping outside for a minute.’
‘I’ll take a bit of a walk,’ said Davies. ‘I’ll come back in ten minutes.’
‘I’d like a deposit.’
‘I’ll be back.’
‘It’s usual to have a deposit. Before I ring her. Fifty quid will do, then you give the other fifty to her. And whatever you decide for … extras.’
Davies counted out five ten-pound notes. The man checked them carefully and, saying ‘ten minutes’ picked up the telephone.
‘Do I get a receipt?’ inquired Davies.
Pengelly banged the phone down and impatiently scribbled a receipt on a blank-paged pad. He handed it to Davies with ill grace. ‘I’ve built this business on trust,’ he said.
‘I’m sure you have,’ said Davies. ‘You have to, don’t you. I’ll be back.’
He went down the stairs past the detective agency landing. Swiftly he went to the door and tried it but it was locked. He glanced at the dead mouse on the sill, picked it up by the tail and put it in his pocket. He descended the second flight of stairs and went into the chill afternoon.
‘It’s just for yourself, is it?’ he mimicked below his breath. ‘What’s he think it is, a regimental reunion?’
It took five minutes to walk to the beach and he had five minutes to sit on a bench, looking at the sad sea, almost invisible in the afternoon gloom. The signature on the receipt was F. Pengelly. He stood up and retraced his way to the stairs and the office.
The man called for him to go in as he knocked. He was just replacing the phone. ‘She’s very busy,’ he said.
‘She would be,’ acknowledged Davies. ‘Looking like that.’
Pengelly laughed, a sour, short laugh. ‘She’ll meet you outside the Ritz at eight.’
‘The Ritz Hotel?’ said Davies apprehensively.
‘The Ritz Cinema.’
‘She wants to go to the pictures?’
Pengelly looked at him in amazement and scorn. He produced a pink comb and began combing the thin hairs on his bald head feverishly. ‘That’s where’s she’ll meet you,’ he said. ‘You won’t get away with taking her to the pictures, mate. She’ll want to go somewhere nice. Michelle is very particular.’
‘Ah, it’s Michelle is it. Right I’m glad she’s particular. I am too.’
The Ritz was showing Postcards from the Edge. Davies smiled at Michelle and said awkwardly: ‘Good picture for Bournemouth.’
She looked puzzled. Plump mouth pursed, she looked first at the sign above the cinema and then unsurely at Davies. ‘You’re not an intellectual, are you?’ she asked warily.
‘Me? God, no. I just thought it was a bit appropriate. Seaside, postcards, edge of the cliff, sort of thing …’
‘Oh yes, now I see,’ she nodded with another glance at the sign. ‘I wouldn’t have thought of that.’
Pengelly had not exaggerated when he said she had been around. She tried to smooth herself down, rubbing her pink, ringed hands down the sagging artificial furs of her coat, and blinking her made-up eyes. ‘Had a hard night last night,’ she explained adding frankly: ‘And I can’t take them at my age. Not like I did once. I wouldn’t have come out at all but Pengelly said you were desperate.’
They were walking along the damp pavement, lit by the windows of the closed shops, towards the taxi rank. Davies winced at the information but made no comment. ‘What would you like to do?’
Her frown did not improve her appearance. ‘Dinner,’ she said emphatically. ‘I’m always taken to dinner. Nearly.’
‘Anywhere special?’
‘Pengelly said you wanted to take me to the Ritz. That’s why I came out.’
Glumly Davies nodded. He might have known. They got into the taxi and drove around the one-way system and then east. She pushed herself familiarly against him in the back seat and he smiled at her in the merciful dimness.
It was not far. Davies helped her out of the taxi and paid the driver. She was wearing red stockings on fat, though shapely, legs. Ten years before she had probably looked passable.
The doorman studied Davies oddly, confirming his worst fears. Two nights before he had gone there with Jemma, beautiful and black, who could not help but be noticed, and now he was back with a big, blousy blonde. ‘’Evening,’ he said as blithely as he could.
‘Good evening sir,’ returned the doorman and with a short stare towards Michelle, ‘Good evening madam.’
‘I’m going to like this,’ confided Michelle as she took Davies’ arm going into the foyer. ‘When he said it was the Ritz I thought it was one of his lies. I’ve never set foot here before.’
Davies was not surprised but he did not say so. ‘I thought it was your stamping ground,’ he said.
‘Me? No, I generally stamp elsewhere.’
He led her into the bar. She had a double vodka and tonic followed qui
ckly by another. Over the third he told her he had been ill and was considering early retirement from his job as a tax inspector. His wife had gone off with a man from Ipswich.
‘Fancy you being in Income Tax,’ she said, adding slyly: ‘Oh, you just wait till later. I’ll get my own back on you.’ She puffed her cheeks in a plump giggle and looked around with an almost winsome expression. ‘It really is nice,’ she said. ‘Thank you for bringing me, Lol.’
He had told her his name was Laurence Durrell. He had failed to prepare an alias and had panicked when she asked. Laurence Durrell was in his head because a man had been reading one of Durrell’s novels in the hotel lounge that afternoon. He mentioned to Davies that Bournemouth seemed, in a roundabout way, like Alexandria, and Davies politely agreed there were resemblances although he did not understand the reference. Durrell remained in his mind, however, and it was the first name that came to him when he introduced himself to Michelle. She showed no sign of recognition. He thought she was probably not a reader.
She was, however, an eater, ploughing with increasing enjoyment through the most expensive dishes on the menu. ‘Are you sure you haven’t run off with all our tax money, Lol?’ she smirked through a mouthful of partridge. She drank in quantity, becoming flushed and content.
The restaurant manager had joined those looking surreptitiously askance at Davies, once his attention had been drawn to their table by the waiter who had recognised him from the Saturday, a sighting confirmed by the wine waiter. He was obviously being listed as a man who enjoyed women in variety. Inwardly he groaned. He consoled himself by pouring the wine extravagantly.
‘The bloke what I had last night wanted to pretend we was in a tent,’ she confided leaning towards him with a surge of scent.
‘Really? I bet you get some funny requests, don’t you.’ He was aware that his words were slipping. She giggled fruitily. ‘Funny’s not in it, Lol. How about another one, had me done up in a ballet dancer’s gear? Me, in my state. And he brought his own kit. He was an opera and ballet maniac apparently and had fantasies about some of those big fat opera ladies dancing in the ballet. It was exhausting believe me. I was knackered. But he paid up all right and went away happy. That’s the main thing.’ She regarded him with dampish eyes. ‘I like to send them away happy,’ she told him throatily. She pressed his crotch below the table.
The Complete Dangerous Davies Page 59