Gently Sinking

by Alan Hunter

  Outside, the massive figure of the bouncer stood black and poised at the foot of the steps. Gently went down to him. He held out his hand. The bouncer hesitated, then passed the keys.

  Gently got in his car, started it, backed it.

  From the vestibule came a cry and the sound of a scuffle.

  A man came through the swing-doors fast, half-stumbling, half-falling down the steps. It was Aaron Taylor. Gently pushed open his nearside door. Taylor stumbled in. Gently drove away.

  ‘You hurt?’ he said.

  Taylor’s cheek was bleeding and his lip was split and puffing up.

  ‘No, sir,’ he panted. ‘I don’t hurt easy. Just someone catched me with a bottle.’

  ‘You know who?’

  Taylor wiped at the blood.

  ‘They don’t like me talking to you, sir,’ he jerked.

  Gently grunted, kept driving slowly through the empty streets, the rain.

  Taylor pulled out a handkerchief and patted his cheek, making dark blotches on the white fabric. He sat low in his seat, knees hooking high, eyes staring forward through the screen.

  ‘You drop me some place, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Gently said. ‘Where?’

  ‘Just near the canal, sir. If you’s going that way.’

  Gently drove under the railway, reached the canal.

  He parked. Aaron Taylor didn’t get out.

  ‘I don’t know where Sadie is, sir,’ he said.

  ‘So I keep hearing,’ Gently said.

  ‘But I sure know where I’d start looking,’ Aaron Taylor said.

  He moulded the handkerchief against his cheek.

  ‘You just look Manchester way,’ he said.

  ‘Manchester,’ Gently said.

  Aaron Taylor nodded.

  ‘That’s where they have friends, sir. Manchester way. Sadie stayed in Manchester when she first come over. You going to look, you look there.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Gently said. ‘Where in Manchester?’

  ‘I don’t know no more than that, sir,’ Aaron Taylor said.

  He got out of the car, closed the door, padded away in the rain.

  CHAPTER NINE

  NOTHING CAME IN from Manchester overnight.

  Before breakfast, Gently rang Divisional HQ. Tallent had left no message for him, so Gently ate lei-suredly and read his papers.

  Through the window he could see Elphinstone Road beginning to dry off in patches. The sky over Finchley was yellowish and drained-looking, but the radio forecast had been doubtful.

  Across in the Gardens, plane trees shed leaves of the same tints as the leaves in Calonne Road.

  At half-past nine he set out, taking the North Circular Road to Twyford. He found Tallent waiting for him in the office, along with Makin and Stout.

  Tallent looked Gently over quizzically.

  ‘No knife-wounds,’ he said.

  ‘They don’t take with me,’ Gently said. ‘Someone coshed Aaron Taylor with a bottle.’

  Tallent blew a raspberry.

  ‘Kids’ stuff,’ he said. ‘But maybe it knocked sense into his thick skull. He give you the Manchester bit?’

  Gently nodded.

  ‘So it’s just paid off,’ Tallent said.

  He flipped a message-form across the desk. The message originated with Salford Constabulary. It said that Sadie Virginia Sunshine had been located at 252 Ponsford St., Salford. She was lodging there with a family named Quintos. She had arrived in Salford late Wednesday evening. She was being detained at Salford HQ pending instructions from requester.

  ‘You rang them?’ Gently said.

  ‘Pronto,’ Tallent said. ‘She’s on her way. This is the breakthrough. One hour with her and we can get back to chivvying motorists.’

  ‘Does the name Quintos mean anything to you?’

  ‘It ought to,’ Tallent said. ‘It keeps trying to ring a bell.’

  Gently picked up the Immigration Department list from Tallent’s tray and laid it on the desk facing Tallent.

  Tallent stared at it. Then he whistled softly.

  ‘My God,’ he said. ‘They took a knock.’

  ‘Nothing else from Salford?’ Gently said.

  ‘Nope,’ Tallent said.

  He grabbed the phone.

  After a while he talked with someone, scribbled notes, slapped the phone down.

  ‘There’s an Albert Quintos,’ he said. ‘He drives an articulated truck. He was away from home Tuesday, Wednesday.’

  ‘Do they know where?’

  ‘He says Bristol. Claims to have checked in there around 6 p.m.’

  ‘Bristol is rather distant.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tallent said. ‘But he could have been lying about when he checked in. And there’s quick trains. Give or take a little and Albert could be our chummie.’

  ‘It fits in,’ Makin said. ‘If he’s a friend of the Sunshines’.’

  ‘Another boy-friend of Sadie’s,’ Tallent said. ‘Who knows?’

  He took up the phone again and rang Bristol. He gave Bristol the address he’d scribbled on the pad. When he was through he hooked a cigarette from a pack, lit it, took several long drags.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t feel right. This one is too much out of the blue. All along I’ve got the feeling this job is, you know, domestic.’

  ‘What did you get last night?’ Gently said.

  ‘Nix,’ Tallent said. ‘And wet feet. If Grey was carrying on with Sadie he covered his tracks really well.’

  ‘Anything at all?’

  ‘Two black whores,’ Tallent said. ‘Deborah Jones and Hannah Miffin. Grey knocked around with both of those, but not as late as 22 April. Seems he was playing the field a bit, I hear some other names mentioned. But all bangers. He didn’t have a steady. Then after a time he quit the game.’

  ‘Perhaps when he did get a steady,’ Makin said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Tallent said. ‘That would be the idea. Sometime last winter was about when, say after the parties, before Easter.’

  ‘Till now, six months,’ Makin said.

  ‘About six months,’ Tallent said. ‘Under wraps. Longer, and we might be getting whiffs of it. For six months he could be lucky.’

  ‘So coming to Osgood,’ Gently said.

  ‘Osgood,’ Tallent said, ‘wasn’t covering. This last ten days he’s been buddies with Sadie. Plenty of witnesses have seen them together.’

  ‘But only during these last ten days?’

  ‘Pretty much that,’ Tallent said.

  ‘You get the idea they were always friendly,’ Makin said. ‘But since the sinking it got more particular.’

  ‘Me,’ Tallent said, ‘I’m cold on Osgood. That stupid jerk doesn’t have it in him. If you did get him steamed up enough to kill Blackburn he’d have bungled the job, brought the ceiling down. The chummie who knifed Blackburn was an expert. He knew where the point should go in. It was all very slick, very professional, everything Osgood never was.’

  ‘He might have been lucky, sir,’ Stout suggested.

  ‘Yes, but since,’ Tallent said. ‘The way he’s behaved. And we had the lab boys go over his wardrobe. He isn’t bright enough. He must have bungled.’

  ‘Well, Grey’s out,’ Stout said. ‘I’m afraid that’s certain, sir. Everything he gave us about Tuesday checks.’

  ‘He never was in it,’ Tallent said. ‘With him, it’s the other way. He’s too bright to be around at a killing. That leaves us the Sunshines, Taylor, and now Albert Quintos.’

  Tallent drew smoke, let it fan out elegantly.

  ‘So how about Taylor, sir?’ he said to Gently. ‘You seem to have had a session with him. How does he rate?’

  Gently shrugged.

  ‘About third favourite,’ he said.

  ‘We don’t cross him off?’

  ‘No.’ Gently shook his head. ‘He had motive, opportunity, perhaps the weapon. We can’t cross him off. Put him down third favourite.’

  ‘So, third favourite
,’ Tallent said. ‘We’re getting the card straight. Now we’ve got Quintos and the two Sunshines. Quintos is a dark horse, we don’t know about Quintos. But that list says he had motive and he may have had opportunity. Would you say second favourite?’

  ‘It’s your card,’ Gently said.

  ‘Right,’ Tallent said. ‘I’m running him second. That gives us the Sunshines as odds-on, which I reckon is a fair mark-up.’

  He hooked out another cigarette and lit it from the butt of the first.

  ‘Sharkey,’ he said. ‘Our front-runner. Perhaps you have a stable-report on him, sir.’

  Gently took one of Tallent’s cigarettes, lit it.

  ‘Nervous,’ he said. ‘He’ll maybe break.’

  ‘Well, well,’ Tallent said. ‘Is that so?’

  ‘With a little more pressure,’ Gently said.

  Tallent leaned back and smoked a few puffs.

  ‘Yeah, that’s how it has to be,’ he said. ‘When you trot them round the paddock Sharkey always shows up best. A domestic job. Sadie and Sharkey. Motive, opportunity and weapon. All the way round they fit the pattern. All the way. No gaps.’

  ‘I’d leave Sadie out,’ Makin said.

  ‘Let’s be sentimental,’ Tallent said. ‘Leave her out. But in or out she’s part of the pattern. Blackburn died while he was laying her.’

  ‘But she did run to the Quintoses,’ Stout put in. ‘There could be something significant in that.’

  ‘Down, boy,’ Tallent said. ‘Don’t bug me with significance. She ran to sympathetic friends.’

  He squinted over his cigarette at Gently.

  ‘How about that little more pressure?’ he said. ‘Like getting a search-warrant for the Coconut Grove, raiding Sharkey’s wardrobe, things like that?’

  Gently shook his head.

  ‘Not necessary,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, but if we break him,’ Tallent said. ‘We’re short on evidence.’

  ‘He’s breaking,’ Gently said. ‘Now we have Sadie we’ve only to play out the game. We’ve got a whole scene going. All we do is pick up the stakes.’

  He reached for the phone, rang the switchboard. ‘Get me Sunshine, Paradise Road, Brickfields,’ he said.

  Nobody spoke while the call was coming.

  Tallent jigged gouts of smoke at the ceiling.

  Sharkey came on.

  ‘Chief Superintendent Gently,’ Gently said. ‘We’ve found your sister, Sunshine. She was staying in Salford. I thought perhaps you’d like to know.’

  At the other end was silence.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ Gently said.

  ‘Yeh,’ Sharkey’s voice came huskily. ‘I can hear what you’re saying.’

  ‘She was staying with friends,’ Gently said. ‘Name of Quintos. You know the Quintoses?’

  Again silence.

  ‘Do you know them?’ Gently said. ‘The man’s name is Albert Quintos.’

  ‘Yeh, I know them,’ Sharkey said.

  ‘You’ll have seen Albert Quintos recently,’ Gently said.

  ‘No, man,’ Sharkey said. ‘I ain’t seen him. Long time since I seen Al Quintos.’

  ‘You surprise me,’ Gently said. ‘Well, that’s the message. We’ll have your sister back here today.’

  He hung up.

  ‘Any bites?’ Tallent said.

  ‘The Quintos angle,’ Gently said. ‘He didn’t like it.’

  ‘To hell with Quintos,’ Tallent said. ‘Quintos is too far out on a wing. So what are we doing?’

  ‘We’re waiting,’ Gently said. ‘Waiting for Sadie. Like some others before us.’

  Bristol came back at 12.30 p.m. with a report on Albert Quintos. Quintos had checked his articulated truck into a lorry park at 5.35 p.m. on Tuesday. He’d booked into a transport café at 5.50 p.m. but he hadn’t spent the night there. Bristol were checking further, but it wasn’t unusual for drivers to spend the night on the town. Wednesday morning Quintos had reported to the docks to be unloaded and reloaded. He was checked out at 2 p.m., his destination Salford.

  By train, Quintos could have reached Paddington at a little after 9.30 p.m.

  ‘So it’s on,’ Tallent admitted. ‘Just. If somebody whisked him across from Paddington. You want more action?’

  Gently shook his head.

  ‘We’ll leave it with Bristol for the moment.’

  He took Tallent to lunch with him.

  At 2.40 p.m. a white Police Jaguar arrived at Divisional HQ.

  At 2.45 p.m. Sadie Sunshine was sitting on a chair in Tallent’s office.

  ‘You’ve had a meal, Miss Sunshine?’ Gently said.

  Miss Sunshine sat knowledgeably, her handsome legs crossed. She was tall. She had a moulded figure. She was wearing a tailored lilac suit with a discreet blouse. She had expensively set and curled brown hair that softly nested her wide-boned face. She had a dimple. She had a slightly snubbed nose. She had a mouth with a natural smile.

  ‘Oh sure,’ she said, in a warm contralto. ‘Those two policemen were very good to me. I don’t have any complaints at all. I sure understand why you want to see me.’

  ‘That’s nice, Miss Sunshine,’ Tallent said. ‘We were getting the idea you were trying to avoid us.’

  Miss Sunshine smiled at Tallent. ‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘I guess I’m impulsive now and then.’

  Tallent sat down.

  At a table near the desk Stout sat with a notebook, but not with his eyes on it.

  Makin was absent. Instead, a greying-haired policewoman occupied a seat beside the door.

  The policewoman, whose eyes were also grey, stared out of the window with fixed attention.

  ‘So you can understand why we’d want to see you,’ Gently said. ‘Would you like to enlarge on that, Miss Sunshine?’

  Miss Sunshine transferred her smile to Gently.

  ‘Why, yes,’ she said. ‘That’s surely natural. I was Tommy’s girl-friend a long time. We only broke it up a fortnight ago. So when something like this happens to Tommy, I’m about the first person you’ll think of. Isn’t that so?’

  ‘That’s so,’ Gently said.

  ‘Well, then,’ Miss Sunshine said. ‘Me being impulsive, I thought I’d go to visit some friends, perhaps wait for the dust to settle a little.’

  ‘You didn’t think you should see us straight away?’

  ‘I felt it could postpone,’ Miss Sunshine said.

  ‘Because by then suspicion might be resting elsewhere?’

  Miss Sunshine smiled, moved her elegant shoulders.

  ‘You seem an intelligent person,’ Gently said. ‘People like you usually have good memories.’

  ‘You just flatter me,’ Miss Sunshine said. ‘I don’t lay claim to anything special.’

  ‘Let’s start with a date,’ Gently said. ‘22 April.’

  Miss Sunshine thought.

  ‘Is that something?’ she said.

  ‘I’m asking you,’ Gently said. ‘22 April.’

  Miss Sunshine thought further.

  ‘It’s just Sharkey’s birthday,’ she said.

  ‘Just Sharkey’s birthday?’

  ‘That’s all,’ she said.

  ‘But it’s a day he’d remember, isn’t it?’ Gently said.

  ‘Sure he’d remember it.’

  ‘And his wife,’ Gently said.

  ‘She’d remember.’

  ‘And you,’ Gently said.

  Miss Sunshine smoothed her taut skirt.

  ‘So,’ Gently said, ‘perhaps you’ll remember it for us. What you were doing 22 April. Where you went. Who with. What you wore. Who might have seen you.’

  ‘Oh gosh, that’s too much,’ Miss Sunshine said.

  ‘It shouldn’t over-tax your memory,’ Gently said. ‘Other dates in April perhaps, but not the 22nd. Not your brother’s birthday.’

  Miss Sunshine examined her white-gloved hands, stretched them delicately, arranged them on her thighs.

  ‘I guess I went up town,’ she said. ‘Saturdays I usually go
up town.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘I’m thinking,’ she said. ‘Maybe I met somebody there who’ll remember.’

  Gently said nothing.

  ‘You aren’t helping,’ she said.

  Gently shrugged, picked up his pipe.

  ‘Yes, I went up to buy Sharkey a present,’ she said. ‘I’m remembering now. I must have worn my spring outfit.’

  She hesitated.

  ‘It was a pink two-piece, she said. ‘A fitted jacket with a mini-skirt.’

  She looked questioningly at Gently.

  ‘Go on,’ Gently said.

  ‘Oh, and a bonnet,’ she said. ‘A white bonnet.’

  ‘A lace bonnet?’

  ‘Mostly lace.’

  ‘A white lace bonnet.’

  Miss Sunshine nodded.

  ‘Do I get points for that?’ she said.

  ‘You’re doing very well,’ Gently said. ‘Perhaps at this stage your memory is beginning to come back with a rush.’

  ‘That’s truly psychic,’ Miss Sunshine said. ‘One or two other things are popping up. For instance, if only the bonnet was noticed I was maybe seen riding in a car. But that wouldn’t be surprising, would it, with me going around with Tommy Blackburn?’

  ‘Were you with Blackburn that day?’ Gently said.

  ‘No, you’re right,’ Miss Sunshine said. ‘I wasn’t. Tommy was out of town on a trip. Don’t let me tell you anything wrong.’

  ‘So,’ Gently said.

  ‘I’m thinking,’ she said. ‘Yes, somebody gave me a lift that day. I think it was Freddy. Yes, Freddy. I had a lift with Freddy Grey.’

  ‘A lift,’ Gently said.

  ‘Would that be criminal?’

  Gently shrugged. ‘Ask Mrs Grey.’

  ‘Mrs Grey?’

  Her eyes searched Gently’s. Gently met them without expression.

  ‘I met Mrs Grey a couple of times,’ she said. ‘I sure felt sorry for that woman. She didn’t have one hope in hell of holding Freddy. She’d think about everything.’

  ‘Perhaps she had cause,’ Gently said.

  ‘Oh, sure she had cause,’ Miss Sunshine said. ‘But she was the first cause herself. She acted like Freddy was her enemy.’

  ‘You think she’d exaggerate about his affairs.’

  ‘She’d exaggerate all right.’