Gently Sinking

by Alan Hunter

  ‘You’re fond of cricket?’ Gently said.

  ‘I didn’t miss a Test yet,’ Sharkey said.

  ‘Back in Kingston,’ Gently said.

  ‘Oh yes, you bet. Back in Kingston.’

  ‘With your kid brother,’ Gently said. ‘He was fond of cricket too?’

  Sharkey’s eyes squeezed shut.

  ‘Man,’ he said thickly. ‘You got through me with that one.’

  Gently took the Immigration Department list from his wallet, unfolded it, handed it to Sharkey. Sarah Sunshine glided behind her husband, read over his shoulder with frightened eyes. She moaned, hid her face in his shoulder. Sharkey’s mouth trembled, twitched.

  ‘Yeh man,’ he said at last. ‘That’s mighty official.’

  He handed the list back to Gently.

  * * *

  ‘Of course, you wouldn’t have seen him,’ Gently said, ‘since you left Jamaica. How old was he then? About fifteen?’

  Sharkey shook off his wife. He sat down. Sarah Sunshine slunk behind the table.

  ‘He’d perhaps have left school,’ Gently said. ‘Be running wild. Down at the harbour. On the beaches. He’d be a swimmer.’

  ‘Oh Christ,’ Sharkey said. ‘Don’t man, don’t. You worse than Mr Tallent. Why cain’t you hit me?’

  ‘Was he a swimmer?’ Gently said.

  Sharkey jammed his fists into his eyes.

  ‘Was he?’ Gently continued.

  Sharkey groaned. ‘Yeh. A good swimmer. He’d keep swimming.’

  ‘If he had a chance,’ Gently said. ‘The ship going down might suck him under.’

  Sharkey sobbed.

  ‘Perhaps it would be the better way,’ Gently said. ‘Quicker. Better than him swimming around, not giving up.’

  ‘Oh you devil, you devil,’ Sharkey sobbed.

  ‘Not that you cared very much, did you?’ Gently said.

  ‘You ain’t safe, man,’ Sharkey sobbed. ‘I’ll kill you.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gently said. ‘But Blackburn was responsible.’

  He folded the list and put it away. Sharkey was staring with sodden eyes. His hands were upturned, the fingers hooked. He was drawing breath through his mouth.

  ‘Did you pay for Sonny’s trip?’ Gently said. ‘Or did Blackburn give him a free passage?’

  Sharkey didn’t seem to hear him, went on staring, breathing roughly.

  ‘Perhaps the guitar lessons squared it.’

  ‘You let my man be!’ Sarah Sunshine screamed.

  She had the sandwich-knife in her hand, was holding it waveringly, point upwards.

  ‘Yeh, woman, you quiet,’ Sharkey said.

  He closed his hands, let them drop.

  ‘You’s a devilman,’ he said to Gently. ‘It ain’t no good with you, is it?’

  Gently shrugged and drank a little coffee.

  ‘You’d no cause to love Blackburn,’ he said. ‘You couldn’t get rid of him because he owned you. But what he’d done to you, you couldn’t forget.’

  Sharkey glared at him.

  ‘In fact, you hated Blackburn. He was bleeding you dry in any case. He’d seduced your sister. Then he drowned your brother. He was a King of the Barbareens.’

  ‘Police man, you’s fixing me,’ Sharkey said.

  ‘Why did your sister run?’ Gently said. ‘Not because she killed him, but because you killed him, and because she didn’t want to answer questions.’

  ‘You better take me in,’ Sharkey said. ‘You better put the chains on me, man. The way you tell it I’m done for, ain’t no use me putting my word in.’

  ‘You deny hating Blackburn?’ Gently said.

  Sharkey’s eyes smouldered. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You’s about right. I never loved Tommy too much to begin with, and I sure finished up hoping he’d drop deado.’

  ‘He owned this place?’

  ‘Yeh, he owned it. There ain’t no papers, nothing legal, that sort. He put up the dough, I was paying him off. But man, I’d be paying him off at doomsday. About Sadie and him, that’s another matter.’

  ‘Him being white.’

  Sharkey shook his head. ‘I don’t hate white folks,’ he said. ‘You got that notion, you just change it. We’s a mixed-up world, all us people, and it ain’t no use to take exception. But I don’t like my sister living around with a man whose boots I have to lick.’

  ‘Did she know your attitude?’

  ‘She knew that.’

  ‘There were rows?’

  ‘Yeh. Plenty.’

  ‘How did she take the death of your brother?’

  ‘Not too damn hard man,’ Sharkey said.

  He flicked at the sweat growing on his face.

  ‘Maybe she didn’t know Sonny too well,’ he said. ‘Back home she lived with Mother’s folk a lot, that’s Montego way across from Kingston. Me, I around brought him up after Father went off to the Caymans, some place. We had it planned. He was through A-levels. He was coming here to study economics.’

  ‘He a mighty fine boy,’ Sarah Sunshine snuffled. ‘That boy was clever. He going somewhere.’

  ‘He could play most any instrument,’ Sharkey said. ‘He could teach me things. That was Sonny.’

  ‘But your sister did break with Blackburn,’ Gently said.

  ‘Sure, she broke with him,’ Sharkey said. ‘But I don’t know, man, she’d have broken anyway, she never did stop with any man long. Come and go, that’s my sister. She got a thing in her head about a career. I guess Tommy was helping her along that way, fixing auditions, that sort. Only she didn’t make it yet.’

  ‘Did she have a row with him?’

  ‘She didn’t flip big, just looked him straight in the eye and told him.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Maybe I flipped.’

  ‘Threatened him, perhaps?’

  Sharkey looked away.

  ‘You got an idea about me, man,’ he said. ‘Ain’t nothing I can say is going to make any difference. Only you’s wrong, so wrong. I just ain’t a violent man.’

  ‘Did you threaten him?’

  ‘I opened my big mouth. Same way I opened it to you just now.’

  ‘You said you’d kill him.’

  ‘I said that.’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Yeh,’ Sharkey said.

  He fixed his dark eyes on Gently’s.

  ‘I want you to get this straight,’ he said. ‘You say I hated him. Maybe so. But there’s surely more than one kind of hate. I didn’t hate Tommy so I would do him some injury, so I felt about him that he wasn’t human. When I said I’d kill him that was showing him my feelings. I didn’t mean I’d take his life. He knew that.’

  ‘Though he was responsible for Sonny’s death,’ Gently said.

  ‘But man, I wasn’t sure of it,’ Sharkey said. ‘Tommy swore the ship was okay, they surveyed it some place every year. He say the captain wouldn’t sail her if he didn’t know she is okay.’

  ‘That captain would have sailed anything,’ Gently said.

  ‘But I was not blaming Tommy altogether,’ Sharkey said.

  ‘Oh man, he knew,’ Sarah Sunshine said. ‘That’s all a lot of lies he was saying, you man.’

  They turned to her. She stood shivering, big-eyed, still clutching the sandwich-knife tight.

  ‘You woman, be quiet,’ Sharkey said. ‘You don’t know Tommy was saying a lot of lies.’

  ‘I do know that,’ Sarah Sunshine said. ‘Tommy knew a long time that ship is no good.’

  ‘How you know that?’

  ‘I just do hear things.’

  ‘Who you hear?’

  ‘It was Freddy,’ she said.

  ‘Freddy,’ Gently said. ‘You mean Frederick Grey, Mrs Sunshine?’

  ‘That’s who I mean,’ Sarah Sunshine said defiantly. ‘I hear him talk about that to Ozzie.’

  ‘You heard him say Blackburn knew the ship was defective?’

  ‘I hear him say Tommy knew a long time. I hear him say Tommy try to get more insuranc
e, but the insurance people not going to play.’

  ‘When did you hear that?’

  ‘Oh, sometime I hear it. After it all came out in the papers. Freddy and Ozzie are standing at the counter. Maybe they don’t know I’m listening.’

  ‘You woman,’ Sharkey said. ‘Why you not tell me?’

  ‘You man,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to flip again.’

  Gently said, ‘But did you tell anyone?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Sarah Sunshine said, ‘Sadie.’

  Sharkey groaned. ‘That’s the limit,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you just say you told me, you woman? The Superintendent’s going to believe Sadie told me and I been lying to him just now.’

  ‘Did Sadie tell you?’ Gently asked.

  ‘No, man. We didn’t talk about that.’

  ‘But she knew,’ Gently said.

  ‘She didn’t say nothing. She done with Tommy, she didn’t talk about him.’

  ‘When did she fetch her clothes from his flat?’ Gently said.

  ‘About right away,’ Sharkey said. ‘The day after.’

  ‘Would that be after you’d told her what you’d heard?’ Gently asked Sarah Sunshine.

  ‘I don’t just remember that,’ she said. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Of course,’ Gently said. ‘Grey could have told her himself, she didn’t have to hear it second-hand. She was friends with him. No doubt she’d ask him if Blackburn were really to blame for the death of her brother.’

  ‘Why you think that?’ Sharkey said. ‘She ain’t no friends with Freddy Grey.’

  ‘Surely she was?’ Gently’s brows lifted. ‘With Grey as well as Blackburn?’

  Sharkey hesitated, stared. ‘No, sir, oh no, sir,’ he said. ‘She never had much truck with Freddy Grey. I don’t know who’s been telling you that.’

  ‘Freddy go around with lots of women,’ Sarah Sunshine said. ‘I don’t recall any particular one.’

  ‘This one is pretty, well-dressed,’ Gently said. ‘She’s been seen wearing a white hat trimmed with lace.’

  Sarah Sunshine’s hand went to her mouth.

  ‘Oh my gosh,’ she said.

  She looked at Sharkey.

  ‘Man, that ain’t nothing to go by,’ Sharkey said, scowling. ‘That sort of hat is very popular with our womenfolk.’

  ‘How popular?’ Gently said.

  ‘Just as popular as can be,’ Sharkey scowled. ‘That Eartha Kitt set the fashion with them hats. They very becoming to black ladies.’

  ‘Have you got one?’ Gently asked Sarah Sunshine.

  ‘Me? Lordy no!’ Sarah Sunshine said.

  ‘Did Sadie have one?’

  She kept her mouth covered, stared rim-eyed at Gently.

  ‘I’m telling you, man,’ Sharkey said, ‘it don’t signify. You see hats like that here every evening. They’s the gear. So if Sadie had one, that don’t pick her out in a crowd.’

  ‘But she did have one?’

  ‘Yeh. Maybe she did.’

  ‘It isn’t in her wardrobe now,’ Gently said.

  ‘So she took it with her,’ Sharkey said. ‘Why not, man?’

  ‘Did she take it with her?’ Gently asked Sarah Sunshine.

  Sarah Sunshine nodded, eyes still big.

  ‘So she had the hat, Gently said. ‘And she was seen wearing it, riding in Grey’s car in Regent Street. On 22 April. Her spring bonnet. She was wearing it to a meeting with Grey.’

  Sarah Sunshine dropped into a chair.

  ‘Oh you man,’ Sharkey burst out. ‘Cain’t you ever take an answer? That woman could have been any one of a dozen Freddy Grey knocks around with, off and on. So even if it’s Sadie. He maybe give her a lift. I ain’t going to swear he never done that. But there ain’t never been anything intimate between them, that’s sure, that’s certain. We knows that.’

  ‘You both know it.’

  ‘Yeh. Us both.’

  Sharkey sent a quick look at Sarah Sunshine.

  Sarah Sunshine nodded tremulously.

  ‘That’s true, sir,’ she said. ‘We both do know that.’

  ‘So you forget it, man,’ Sharkey said. ‘You don’t need to keep pulling Sadie into this affair. She finished with Tommy way before it happened, and nothing she heard since didn’t alterate that.’

  ‘And of course, she was here all Tuesday evening?’

  Sharkey dragged at his beard.

  ‘Ain’t that what I said, man?’

  ‘Taylor didn’t see her.’

  ‘I cain’t help Taylor.’

  ‘Taylor was watching for her. Watching Blackburn.’

  ‘She don’t feel so good, Tuesday,’ Sarah Sunshine said, her eyes fixed on the floor. ‘She stay in her room, don’t do her act. That’s why Aaron don’t see her.’

  ‘So there wasn’t any act?’

  ‘No, sir. Just the band.’

  ‘You didn’t fill in?’ Gently said to Sharkey.

  ‘Me? No man,’ Sharkey said. His eyes were puzzled. ‘I guess I was busy. This place gets hectic.’

  ‘Perhaps you didn’t even notice,’ Gently said. ‘Perhaps you didn’t feel so good, either. I daresay Mrs Sunshine can carry on when you and Sadie are indisposed.’

  ‘I was right out there, man! Ask a hundred people.’

  ‘But your sister wasn’t.’

  ‘She’s here too.’

  ‘If you were out there, you don’t know that,’ Gently said. ‘And if you know that you weren’t out there, I’d say both you and she were missing, her all the time, you part of it. Around half-past nine to half-past ten. No dance-act. No song.’

  ‘I just can prove—’

  Sarah Sunshine lifted her head.

  ‘I can prove Sharkey is there, sir,’ she said.

  She was looking at her husband. He looked at her. Her eyes were steady.

  ‘I can swear to it,’ she said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  WHEN GENTLY LEFT, Sharkey stayed in the kitchen and it was Sarah who showed the Yard man out. At the foyer she glanced back quickly, then laid her hand on Gently’s arm. She looked up at him earnestly.

  ‘You ain’t angry with me, sir?’

  ‘No,’ Gently said. ‘Just doubtful.’

  ‘You don’t have no cause to be doubtful, sir.’

  ‘It’s my way,’ Gently said. ‘I’m a policeman.’

  The hand on his arm was quivering.

  ‘That’s the truth I was saying in there,’ she said. ‘It ain’t just on account of I’m Sharkey’s missus. I do really know he was here at the Club.’

  Gently said nothing.

  ‘You believe me, sir?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll need corroboration,’ Gently said. ‘I hear talk of a hundred people I can ask, but so far nobody’s mentioned a name.’

  Her almond-shaped eyes narrowed.

  ‘We got a staff here, sir,’ she said. ‘There’s four waitresses and the doorman. They all tell you the same as me.’

  ‘Is that corroboration?’ Gently said.

  ‘Then there’s all those people,’ Sarah Sunshine said quickly. ‘We give you names there, sir, addresses and names. ’Bout twenty or thirty your young man took.’

  ‘And what can these twenty or thirty tell me?’

  ‘They tell you Sharkey is here all evening.’

  ‘Were they watching him?’ Gently asked.

  ‘They must have seen him around, sir. He’s running the bar. They got to have seen him.’

  ‘Let’s get this straight,’ Gently said. ‘He runs the bar – and nobody else does.’

  Her hand pulled on his arm.

  ‘I ain’t exactly saying that, sir. But he’s in and out all the time, he ain’t away from there for long.’

  ‘Meanwhile,’ Gently said, ‘the band is playing, the lights going up and down, people dancing, singing. They aren’t watching your husband, if he’s in or out, or when he’s out, or for how long. Is that corroboration?’

  ‘Oh, gosh, yes, sir.’

  ‘No,’ Gently said. �
��We can shoot it to pieces. And your word is suspect because you’re his wife. And the staff’s is suspect. Your husband doesn’t have an alibi.’

  A tremor passed over Sarah Sunshine’s face. Her eyes held to his insistently.

  ‘Sir, I know it’s true,’ she said. ‘Cain’t you just believe me? I’s certain, I’s sure he ain’t mixed up with this.’

  ‘How are you so sure?’

  ‘I just am, sir.’

  ‘Because you know he was here.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I do know that.’

  ‘Or is it because you know Sadie wasn’t here?’

  ‘Sadie . . .’

  Her eyes jumped and the hand trembled. She looked away.

  ‘Sadie was in her room,’ she said. ‘I know that, too, sir. I went in there twice. She gone to bed with a headache. I go in there ’bout quarter to ten-time to take her a hot drink. She surely is there. She is reading a novel.’

  ‘There’s a back way out of here?’

  ‘Sadie never did—’

  ‘And perhaps a short-cut to the station,’ Gently said. ‘You’re lying, Mrs Sunshine. Sadie wasn’t in her room. Not at quarter to ten. Perhaps not at all.’

  ‘Oh you man, you man,’ Sarah Sunshine wailed.

  ‘What time did she go out?’ Gently said.

  ‘She never did go—’

  ‘She went out, and she went out to Blackburn’s flat. You know. And you know too that she was intimate with Grey.’

  ‘Oh man, I don’t know!’ Sarah Sunshine wailed, ducking her face in Gently’s arm.

  ‘Yes,’ Gently said. ‘That’s why you’re so certain. So certain your husband is in the clear.’

  Her whole body was shaking against his.

  ‘Sadie had gone out, hadn’t she?’ Gently said.

  ‘Oh maybe, maybe,’ Sarah Sunshine wailed. ‘I ain’t so sure ’bout when I went in.’

  ‘When did you miss her?’

  ‘Oh, gosh, I ain’t sure—’

  ‘I think she was missing all the evening.’

  ‘I ain’t certain, sir—’

  ‘You can guess.’

  She gave a little moan, said, ‘All d’ evening.’

  ‘And when did she come back?’

  Sarah Sunshine swayed away from him, though still keeping her grip on his arm. Her rimmed eyes looked at him.

  ‘Honest I don’t know, sir. Honest and truly. She there next morning.’