by Alan Hunter
‘That’s very perceptive,’ Gently said.
Tallent grinned, said, ‘I have moments. But still I don’t like that bastard much. I’d go to evens he’s not our chummie. What about you, sir?’
Gently shrugged.
‘I can’t see Osgood using a knife, sir,’ Stout said.
‘Sonny boy,’ Tallent said.
‘But I can’t, sir,’ Stout said. ‘He looks more like a strangler.’
‘Sonny,’ Tallent said. ‘You take a strangler. Give him reason. Put a knife in his hand. What does he do?’
‘Well, I don’t know, sir,’ Stout said. ‘It was just an impression.’
Grey walked in jauntily. He glanced around at the steaming raincoats, Tallent’s unshod feet.
‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘It’s raining out there. Or maybe you just got back from a sewer.’
‘Sit,’ Tallent said. ‘You’re losing, boy. Trouble’s nudging in on you fast.’
‘I keep throwing fits,’ Grey said, sitting. ‘I think maybe I left a tap running at home.’
‘Sure you did,’ Tallent said. ‘She wears skirts.’
‘In here, never a dull one,’ Grey said.
He smiled at Gently.
‘Grey,’ Gently said. ‘I seem to recall you have a good memory.’
‘It works on cigarettes,’ Grey said. ‘And incidentally, I prefer Player’s.’
Tallent tossed him a cigarette. Grey lit it. He blew smoke towards the ceiling.
‘I’m remembering,’ he said. ‘Let me help you.’
‘I want you to remember April the twenty-second,’ Gently said.
Grey puffed a while. He kept looking at Gently.
‘Why the twenty-second?’ he said.
‘It’s a date I have,’ Gently said. ‘What were you doing on that date?’
Grey puffed some more.
‘It’s so sudden,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you could give me the day of the week.’
‘Certainly,’ Gently said. ‘It was a Saturday. The office would be closed. Where were you?’
Grey kept puffing.
‘No good,’ he said. ‘I just don’t seem to recall that Saturday. If it had been Easter, now, something like that. Maybe I took the wife racing.’
Gently shook his head.
‘No?’ Grey said. ‘Could be we were up shopping.’
‘Could be she was,’ Gently said.
‘Could it?’ Grey said.
He held in smoke.
‘It’s coming to me,’ he said.
‘Good,’ Gently said.
‘I like to help,’ Grey said. ‘I remember a Saturday, maybe that Saturday, when I went up town to buy shirts.’
‘Without your wife.’
‘Seems so,’ Grey said. ‘Maybe she took a fit, came later. But I went up alone, ate lunch there, came back without seeing her.’
‘Came back alone?’
Grey puffed twice.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Being honest. I met a broad from the Coconut Grove and gave her a lift back to Brickfields.’
‘Keep being honest,’ Gently said.
Grey shrugged. ‘So I nearly lied about it,’ he said. ‘Why not? It can’t be anything to you. Maybe I laid her. What then?’
Gently said nothing.
‘Now you’ll want to know her name,’ Grey said. ‘That’s what this is leading up to. You’ve maybe got an idea that a broad killed Tommy, maybe a broad I was going round with. That it?’
Gently kept silent.
‘Yes, that’s it,’ Grey said. ‘You’ve talked to my wife, that’s pretty obvious, and she’s filled you in with a few theories. But she’s a liar, of course. You know that? You’d better double-check anything she says. Another thing: she can’t tell one black person from another. Identification by her means nothing.’
‘But you agree you were out with a black woman that day?’
Grey puffed quickly.
‘Didn’t I say so?’
‘So if your wife said that she told the truth?’
‘Maybe. Only she wouldn’t know which girl I was with.’
‘She knows one black woman,’ Gently said.
‘She does?’
Grey’s eyes were suddenly sharp. Then he laughed.
‘I was forgetting. She met Sadie. Tommy had her with him a couple of times. Did she say it was Sadie?’
Gently watched him.
‘That’s hardly likely, is it?’ Grey said. ‘Sadie was Tommy’s girl, she didn’t play around. He paid too many bills for her to cheat on him. Does Eileen say that?’
Gently’s face was blank.
‘So she does,’ Grey said. ‘Bless her. I’ll bet she only saw that girl’s bonnet, and she swore blind it was Sadie. And you tumbling over yourself to believe that, because Eileen had already told you about Tommy and me. So’s now I’m lined up for conspiracy with Sadie. Big deal. Bouquet for Eileen.’
He stabbed out the cigarette.
‘Try Ozzie,’ he said. ‘Ozzie went out with her.’
‘But you had the alibi,’ Gently said.
‘That’s right,’ Grey said. ‘Why am I grieving? None of this crap will stand up in court. Even Eileen couldn’t louse up my alibi. So have it your way. Say it was Sadie. Give yourself a ball with that.’
‘Was it Sadie?’
‘Why not?’
‘She was your girl-friend as well as Blackburn’s?’
‘Anything,’ Grey said. ‘You want to think so. There’s no harm in it. Keep thinking.’
‘And she killed Blackburn?’
‘Sure,’ Grey said.
‘And warned you when?’
‘She warned me when. And then I went out and got an alibi, and that’s the hard part. I’m fire-proof.’
‘Not if this goes into a statement,’ Gently said.
Grey laughed. ‘There isn’t going to be a statement,’ he said. ‘I’m just playing along. This is your suggestion. But you can’t prove anything except the alibi.’
‘Suppose I could,’ Gently said.
Grey’s eyes were sharp again for a moment.
‘Suppose you were heard offering incitement,’ Gently said. ‘And add to that a planned alibi.’
Grey hesitated, said, ‘Have you talked to Sadie?’
Gently watched, said nothing.
Grey took some breaths.
‘So be clever,’ he said. ‘I don’t scare like Ozzie does. I know where I stand. So does my lawyer. Out of this one I walk away.’
‘That must comfort you,’ Gently said.
‘It does,’ Grey said. ‘Do I go?’
‘Wait,’ Gently said. ‘I’ve a message from your wife. She asked me to tell you that she knows.’
‘Great,’ Grey said. ‘She knows what?’
‘You can go,’ Gently said.
Grey paused, looking at Gently, then got to his feet and was marched out.
‘And for me, that’s it,’ Tallent said, when the door closed behind Grey. ‘He was backhanding it, the louse, but he was giving it just the way it happened. He triggered that killing.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Makin said. ‘That was my impression too. He knew you were on to him, but he didn’t know how far, so he kept spelling it out to see how you’d take it.’
‘He triggered it,’ Tallent said. ‘Through Sadie he did it. Who her partner was doesn’t matter. It could have been Sharkey or Taylor or Osgood, or Sadie by herself. But Grey triggered it!’
‘Not Sadie by herself, sir,’ Stout said.
‘For once,’ Tallent said, ‘I go with you, sonny.’
Makin pointed to a copy of the Immigration Department’s lists that lay in Tallent’s in-tray.
‘I make Sharkey the favourite, sir,’ he said. ‘Since that turned up I can’t see it otherwise.’
Gently hunched over his pipe, let smoke rise in small rings.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Now we need Sadie. Most of the rest of it is explained.’
‘She perhaps won’t talk,’ Tallent said.
<
br /> Gently smiled. ‘She doesn’t have to talk. Whether she opens her mouth or keeps it closed she is going to condemn the killer for us.’
‘Yeah?’ Tallent said. ‘How’s that?’
Gently puffed, said, ‘We’re pretty sure of the killer. How Sadie reacts, it doesn’t matter how, must fill the blank in the equation. We need her next. We’ll upgrade our signal. If she’s alive we have to have her.’
Tallent stroked his knuckles.
‘If she’s alive?’
‘That’s always an open question,’ Gently shrugged. ‘From the murderer’s point of view she’s better dead, and there’s been a big silence about her up till now.’
‘Yeah,’ Tallent said. ‘Big silence.’
‘For the rest, we need to tie up some details,’ Gently said. ‘I’d like Stout to finish checking out Grey’s alibi, and you and Makin to backtrack on your questioning this afternoon. With reference to Sadie, Grey and Osgood, and anything you can pick up on Grey’s movements yesterday.’
‘Hell,’ Tallent said. ‘You don’t think he killed Sadie?’
‘Then we’ll need the other bereaved relatives on the Immigration Department list checked,’ Gently said. ‘If they have friends or connections this way, if they were away from home on Tuesday. When that’s done’ – he grinned at Tallent – ‘you can knock off and get yourself a night’s rest.’
‘Oh thanks,’ Tallent said. ‘I did wonder about that, like if it figured in the routine where you come from.’
Gently blew rings.
‘I’m spending the evening out,’ he said. ‘Music, dance, bright lights. I want to hear Sharkey sing his calypso. Study night-life out of town.’
Tallent stared.
‘You going there alone, sir?’
‘Blackburn did,’ Gently said. ‘Grey, Osgood.’
‘Yeah, but Blackburn’s in the morgue, sir,’ Tallent said.
‘Coincidence,’ Gently said.
Tallent said nothing.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AT 8 P.M. IT still rained, a cold sweat out of the darkness. Street-light reflections aimed daggers along the narrow Brickfields streets. Mostly the streets were deserted, but here and there loped a black figure, long-limbed, padded-shouldered, dripping trilby slanted forward.
Paradise Street wore a new aspect. At the top end the club’s sign burned red and blue. The street surface receded glimmering towards it between lines of lightless parked cars. The cars were mostly old and decrepit and jazzed with paint and stick-on labels. Several were bumperless and without grilles and only a few retained their hub-caps.
Gently drove through the lines and parked bumpers-on to Sharkey’s red Consul. He waited. A big-shouldered black man came out of the vestibule and down the steps. He came to a stand, eye-whites showing, taking in Gently, the car. Gently dropping his window. The man ambled up to him. He pushed his face close to the window.
‘Man,’ he said. ‘You just knows you cain’t park any place round here.’
‘Oh yes, I think so,’ Gently said. ‘I’ll leave it unlocked with the keys in it.’
The man gaped.
‘You do that,’ he said, ‘and they’ll be selling her in Glasgow some place tomorrow. Who you man – what you want? This only for black people round here.’
Gently got out, raised the window, closed the door, held out the keys.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘You take them. That way we’ll know the car is safe.’
The man jerked his hand away.
‘No, sir!’ he said. ‘You just get back in that car and drive away.’
‘Take them,’ Gently said. ‘Sharkey would like that.’
He shoved the keys at him, walked on.
The beat of steel drums came through the vestibule and swelled as Gently pushed open the inner doors. The lighting was dim except on the stage where coloured spotlights were weaving patterns. Near the stage some couples were dancing. Perhaps a hundred immigrants sat around the tables. There was laughing and a racket of conversation; then suddenly a lull; then a hush.
Gently kept walking towards the bar. The dancing broke up and the drums stopped. In the silence of the warm air one could hear the spotlight motor buzzing in the rafters. Gently’s step sounded softly. Behind the bar Sharkey was standing. Behind Sharkey stood his wife. They didn’t move. Nobody moved.
Gently reached the bar. He sat on a stool. Sharkey’s eyes never left him. Over Sharkey’s shoulder his wife stared, her pretty face tight with terror. Sharkey’s hands were gripped tight, his face shiny and scowling. Behind Gently were stealthy movements. Gently leaned on the counter, didn’t turn his head.
‘I’d like some coffee,’ he said.
Sharkey moved his hand, didn’t let his eyes shift from Gently’s. Sarah Sunshine gave a little whimper, slunk to the coffee-machine, made a clatter with a cup and saucer. Back at the vestibule the doors parted and the bouncer came in, stood hesitant. There were other movements. One of the musicians accidentally touched his drum.
Sharkey said, ‘You come for me, man?’
Gently shook his head. ‘Not yet,’ he said.
‘But you going to come?’
‘Perhaps,’ Gently said. ‘Or perhaps you’ll come to me. When you’re ready.’
He took the coffee from Sarah Sunshine. She’d spilt part of it in the saucer. He spooned in demerara and stirred it. Behind him he heard whispering.
‘So why you here, man?’ Sharkey said.
Gently drank coffee, smiled at Sharkey.
‘You told me to come around for the music,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’d like to hear your calypso again.’
‘You know I ain’t going to sing that calypso.’
‘Why not?’ Gently shrugged. ‘You have your audience.’
‘That ain’t the kind of calypso I sing in public.’ Gently drank again, went on smiling.
Sharkey moved a little towards the counter. He put his hands on it, leaned towards Gently.
‘How many you got out there, man?’ he said. ‘ ’Cause you going to need just about the whole force.’
‘I don’t have anyone,’ Gently said.
‘You ain’t here alone,’ Sharkey said. ‘That’s certain.’
‘Quite alone,’ Gently said. ‘Did I need a bodyguard?’
‘Man, quit kidding,’ Sharkey said. ‘This is serious.’
His dripping face came closer to Gently’s.
‘You just better slide out of here, man,’ he said. ‘If you want me, I come along later. Just don’t let us have no massacres.’
‘You’d do that, would you?’ Gently said.
‘Yeh, man,’ Sharkey said. ‘If that’s how it’s to be. These people won’t let you march me out of here, not unless you got tanks all round.’
‘Nice to know they’re loyal,’ Gently said. ‘But I’m not taking you.’
‘Oh man, I’m telling you,’ Sharkey said.
‘And I’m telling you,’ Gently said. ‘When are we going to have some music?’
Sharkey drew back across the counter, face dragging, staring aslant. He threw a look at the cowering Sarah. She felt his eyes and moaned. The whispering behind Gently had become a buzz, and Sharkey’s eyes darted past him. Then suddenly he snatched a drinks-tray from the counter and struck it a blow with his fist.
‘You peoples out there!’
The buzzing faltered. Sharkey hit the tray again.
‘Listen to me, you bunch of no-goods. Ain’t you seen a white man here before?’
He went through the counter-flap, stood hefting the tray.
‘This man is a friend of mine,’ he said. ‘Yeh, that’s what I’m saying, he’s a friend, so just let me catch you treating him different. He come around here to hear the music, that’s why this man come around, and you going to make me ashamed in front of him? You going to behave like a set of hoodlums?’
He waved the tray.
‘You, Moses, get playing! I don’t recall hearing myself tell you to stop. And you, Josh, get back on the doo
r. And the rest of you sit down, start minding your own business.’
There was a shuffling and creaking, a roll from the drums. Sharkey stood ground a moment, the tray lofted. Then he strutted back into the bar.
Gently was drinking his coffee. He hadn’t turned round.
The band played. There were eight musicians. They were dressed in open-necked white satin shirts and black jeans. One of them was a singer who sang in a language or languages that Gently didn’t understand. They played continuously. Band numbers were connected by solos on drums, xylophone, trumpet and guitar. One member played a chromatic harmonica with an eery virtuousity.
Four waitresses in scarlet overalls carried trays of food and drinks to the tables. Sharkey and Sarah Sunshine served at the bar, both occasionally retiring to the kitchen.
Nobody now appeared to pay much attention to Gently. At the tables they were noisy and laughter was continual. They were mostly youngsters. Some of the girls were very pretty. Corduroy jackets were popular wear with the men.
Near the stage was an open space used by the dancers, who joined in or dropped out as the mood took them. In spite of the noise there was an air of decorousness, a gay politeness. It had a family feeling.
Sharkey ignored Gently. He served customers on each side of him with an intent, silent energy. His expression daunted the customers, who seemed ready to chat, but then took their orders and went quietly away. One felt that normally he was central to the scene but now was deliberately effacing himself. Tonight the bar was a sideshow, existed at the periphery of the noise, the music.
Sarah Sunshine couldn’t ignore Gently. She was on a perpetual tremble. Her big dark eyes were helplessly drawn to him at every interval of serving.
Gently himself might as well not have been there for all the attention he was paying anyone. A heavy figure in a grey raincoat, he sat smoking and leaning over his cup.
His eyes looked sleepy. After a casual look round he’d lapsed into dreamy appreciation of the music.
When at last he stirred it was to give an order. He beckoned to the wide-eyed Sarah Sunshine.
‘What’s that salad dish you’re serving?’
‘That’s – that’s the fried chicken with banana salad, sir.’
Sarah Sunshine stood quivering, mesmerized. Sharkey had gone still, was watching the pair of them.