It was a wan morning with most people by now behind the gates at their work, stragglers at the bus stops, steam curtaining the window of The Copper Kettle café, and shopkeepers yawning behind their counters. He heard compressed coughing from the waiting room of the doctor’s surgery, a milkman on a float clanked with his hazardous load, and two boys, playing truant, squirmed their way through the fence by the railway embankment. For a large place it was often as empty as a village.
At the police station some midnight miscreants were being taken from the overnight cells to the court. There were some familiar faces among the drunks, the drunks and indecents, the drunk and disorderlies and the drunks and incapables, and they saw Davies as a friend.
‘’Morning, all,’ he said as he went through to the CID room. They rumbled their own greetings, and stumbled frowstily forward. After they had gone out, shivering in the early air, to walk to the courthouse around the corner, the desk sergeant took out an aerosol spray and played it around extravagantly. ‘Yardbird wants to see you at ten, Dangerous,’ he called down the corridor. ‘He was shitty because he couldn’t get hold of you yesterday. Wanted to know what you were up to.’
‘Inquiries,’ Davies called back down the corridor. He had half an hour so he went to the canteen and bought a cup of solid coffee and two cakes. Then he returned to the CID room and took the file of Cecil Victor Ramscar from his locker. He had intended to go through it again but he turned instead to the one statement concerning the disappearance of Celia Norris. He read it, with an odd guilt, as though he were looking through something forbidden. Then, just as guiltily, he purloined the key of the ‘Local Records’ room and took down the Celia Norris file. He felt a sharp unreasonable thrill as he opened it again. There she was, laughing up from her photograph, the ice-cream dab on her chin. He ran his fingers thickly down the edges of the documents and statements. All this, and nobody ever found.
Clipped to the front of the wad was a summary of the case and an index of statements. Davies took an absent-minded bite of one cake, and began to read again. He did not like the cake. It stuck to the roof of his mouth. He put the rest in a random file he took from the shelf. One day someone would find a cake in a file. He read through the summary.
Celia Norris had spent what was, almost without doubt, the final afternoon of her life planning her future. At 4 o’clock on 23 July 1951, she had gone to the youth employment office in the town to inquire about the possibilities of becoming a nurse. She had gone afterwards to her home at Hunter Street, almost under the rims of the Ali Baba jars of the power station, had a meal and then left for the youth club at St Fridewide’s Catholic Church. At ten o’clock, or shortly after, she had left there on her bicycle. Her boyfriend, William Lind, had remained behind for a sports meeting and anyway his bicycle had a puncture and he had to walk home. So he did not accompany her. To reach her home she would have cycled along the main road to its junction with Hunter Street and turned there, or perhaps taken the short cut, which she had been known to do, being a girl of no nervous disposition, along the towpath of the canal, later joining the main road and completing her journey as before.
After that night nobody reported seeing her. The bicycle was never discovered. Her clothes were found, except her pants. A lipstick she was known to have carried in the pocket of her dress was missing. A youth called Andrew Parsons, a known underwear thief, was arrested on a call from the attendant of a twenty-four-hour public convenience in the High Street who had seen him handling some girl’s clothing in the establishment. The clothes, a green gingham dress, white bra, white socks and brown Louis-heeled shoes, were identified as those worn by Celia Norris on the night she disappeared and presumably died. Parsons, a nocturnal moocher, told the police he had originally taken the garments from the public lavatory where he found them stuffed behind a cistern at one o’clock one morning in July. The shoes were inside the cistern. He believed it was July 24th. When three weeks later he saw in the newspapers that the clothes were the same as were described as belonging to the missing girl, he panicked and decided to return them to the place where he had found them. The police had questioned him for two days and then let him go. He was kept under surveillance but nothing more came from this.
The finding of the girl’s garments, and the fact of the missing knickers which Parsons (who was found to have a collection of 234 pairs of assorted women’s pants in a cupboard at his lodgings) swore he had never taken or even seen, had turned a desultory search for a wayward teenager who had previously strayed, into a hunt for a body and a murderer. Neither were ever found. Nor was Celia’s bicycle.
And it had happened, by all the evidence, at ten o’clock on a summer evening—a warm summer evening too—and yet no one had come forward to say they had seen a girl in a gingham dress on a bicycle. In that anonymously crowded but somehow vacant place, when it was just growing dark, as it would have been, it was not so strange as it might at first seem. People did not stroll in those streets for there was nowhere to go and it was too early for the exodus from the pubs or the cinemas. Television was still a compelling novelty. There was a regular police van patrol taking in the High Street and the canal towpath (policemen on foot beat had recently been replaced) but neither Police Constable Frederick Fennell nor his colleague, PC James Dudley, who were driving their small vehicle in the area until midnight, saw the girl or reported anything unusual. Celia Norris had mounted her bicycle at the Catholic youth club and ridden away into nothing.
Davies remembered Yardbird and opened the door to look at the clock down the corridor. He still had seven minutes. His coffee was looking even more muddy and was now cold. He attempted a drink and screwed up his face. He took a football pools envelope from his pocket (he had resolved to seek his fortune that season) and noted on its back the names of those who had made statements in the case of Celia Norris:
Elizabeth Norris, mother; Albert Norris, father; William Lind; boyfriend; Ena Brown, a friend; Roxanne Potts, another friend; all members of the youth club; David Boot, youth club leader; Andrew Parsons, underwear thief and the name that had begun it all for Davies: Cecil Victor Ramscar, described as a friend of the girl’s family. There were other names, statements made by people who thought they might be able to assist, but mostly nebulous, and, lastly, the negative report of PC Fennell and PC Dudley, who had been on duty in the police van that night.
The dock along the corridor said three minutes to ten. He still had time. From the file he took the envelope containing the various photographs collected during the investigation. They were pathetic little snapshots, sepia now, moments in a life that had not long to run. Celia with her mother, Celia with her dog, Celia at the seaside with a chisel-faced youth wearing a paper hat, possibly William Lind, and, finally, one that must have lodged in the envelope when he had first opened it the previous night. It showed Celia and another girl at what appeared to be a fairground or fête. Both wore summer dresses and were laughing. Standing between them, ten inches taller than either in an open-necked shirt and badged blazer was a bronzed man, grinning. At first glance it seemed he had his arms about their young waists. But Davies hurried into the desk sergeant and borrowed the magnifying glass the station clerk used for reading small print.
‘Don’t forget Yardbird, Dangerous,’ the sergeant reminded him.
‘No. No. Just going up,’ answered Davies, hurrying back down the corridor. He put the magnifying glass on the photograph. He saw that although the man’s hold on the girls seemed conventionally friendly, his fingers, in fact, were curved higher and touched the undersides of their breasts. He pursed his lips. That, he decided, might be David Boot, youth club leader.
Inspector Yardbird was grouped at his window, hands clasped Napoleonically behind his back, legs astride, shoulders square, a growl on his face. He was gazing over the creased and crowded roofs as though he was considering conquering them. He had called aloofly to answer Davies’s knock but he remained with his back to the room for two minutes until a su
bdued cough caused him to turn to see the Detective Constable.
‘Glad you could make it,’ remarked Yardbird caustically. ‘Searched everywhere for you yesterday. Where were you? At the pictures?’
‘Inquiries, sir,’ said Davies.
Yardbird sniffed. ‘Well, I’ve got some further inquiries for you. And this is bigger stuff than you’ve been asked to handle before. Much bigger. It seems to me you’ve been rather falling behind in the general run of things, Davies.’
There was nothing but for him to agree. ‘Yes, sir,’ he answered. ‘I’ve had that feeling myself. I thought I was being, sort of, overlooked.’
Yardbird sat on the edge of his desk. His left foot just reached the floor. He thought he caught a movement from the window of the girl students’ hostel and he tried to get a firmer look without Davies noticing.
‘Hah,’ smiled Davies amiably. ‘Do those girls still live across there, sir?’
Yardbird spun so quickly he all but spilled from the desk. ‘Girls? For Christ’s sake, which girls?’ He turned and sat down behind the desk, and, without being asked, Davies sat pensively in the visitor’s chair. The Inspector rubbed his face in his hands. ‘I don’t know, Davies,’ he grumbled. ‘I really don’t know. I consider you for a big job, but I honestly can’t tell whether I’m doing either of us a favour. I still can’t get the police garden party out of my mind. Those fucking raffle tickets blowing all over the show. And when you’d got back from collecting them somebody had nicked the raffle money.’
‘I was a poor choice for the raffle, the wrong man,’ admitted Davies. ‘It seemed to go from bad to worse, didn’t it.’
‘The Commissioner thought you were some kind of clown we had hired. I might as well tell you that here and now, Davies. It made me feel pretty stupid I can tell you.’ He sighed and thrust his broad chin into his broader tunic. ‘On the other hand I was always one for giving somebody another chance. And that’s what I’m offering you. Another chance. Did you look through the Ramscar file last night when you came in?’
‘Yes, I did, sir.’
‘Nasty bugger that,’ muttered Yardbird. ‘He’s been around ever since I was a young constable in this division. A finger in every criminal pie, a real villain. Larceny, grievous bodily harm, vice, protection rackets, all sorts of things. And very active in the old London gang wars. Mr Ramscar’s put bullets through a few kneecaps I can tell you.’
‘He’s got a big file, sir,’ agreed Davies. ‘What’s he done this time?’
‘Nothing,’ replied Yardbird. ‘Nothing that our splendid Special Branch can prove. And it’s them that wants him. They just know he’s back in London from abroad, where he’s been involved in some big villainy and they think he’s come back for a good reason. They think he might be up to political crime now. He likes to keep in the trend. Anyway they want him found but they don’t want to set an army looking for him. They just want somebody to track him down. And you’re the somebody. Because they think he’s come home. He’s in this area. You find him.’
‘I see. Find him.’
‘That’s it. Get around his old haunts and his old friends. Ask a lot of questions. We don’t mind too much if he starts flapping his wings. I’m going to detach you from other duties. Just see I get regular reports. It shouldn’t take you long, a couple of weeks at the most.’
‘Yes,’ said Davies. ‘I see.’
Yardbird looked up. It was time for Davies to go.
‘Anything else?’ asked the Inspector. ‘You’ve got the whole picture, now.’
‘No…No, nothing else, sir. Just one thing. Can I use my own transport? My car?’
Yardbird, who had never seen Davies’s Lagonda or the dog, nodded brusquely. ‘If it’s decent. If it doesn’t let down the force. And…Davies.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Keep the expenses down. If you have to go to the West End go by bus. And not too much boozing in those clubs. Remember, you’re not in the Flying Squad.’
Davies thanked him and went out, down the stairs and into the CID room. A detective sergeant called Myer was going through three hundred pornographic pictures. Two other CID men, looking over his shoulder, examined them for clues. Davies got the Ramscar file and sat down to go through it again. He came to the Celia Norris statement and read it minutely. He took a deep breath and plunged into the rest of the history. But in his mind he could see only a girl with a blob of ice-cream on her chin.
Davies had few notions about locating Ramscar. It appeared obvious that if he were in hiding he would hardly visit his once habitual haunts, although he would undoubtedly contact old associates. Davies thought if he walked about loudly enough and asked a great many random questions then Ramscar might come to him.
In the afternoon he went to Park Royal greyhound races and backed four spectacularly losing dogs, one at evens. He made conversations with a number of shifty men, mentioning Ramscar and showing his picture but it appeared to mean nothing. In the toilet he approached a fellow urinator and waved the photograph but the man, white-faced, retreated, still making water, and with a quaint leapfrogging motion along the troughs. As soon as he reached the door he ran and reported Davies to a policeman.
It was not at all a promising first day. At five o’clock he returned to the police station and, unable to help himself, almost mesmerized, he again, took down the file on Celia Norris. He kept looking over his shoulder experiencing the same sensations as when he had, as a boy, secretly examined the illustrations in ‘First Aid To The Injured’, fearful that his mother would catch him enslaved by a drawing of a woman receiving artificial respiration. He felt contracted inside reading through the unfinished story again, looking at the photographs. He found himself making a stupid little movement with his hand trying to brush that nib of ice-cream from the laughing girl’s chin. He reacted with horror when he realized what he was doing. Eventually, unable to help himself, he returned the file and very secretly went out and began to walk the 25-year-old trail of Celia Norris.
Although there had been demolitions and developments on the London fringe of the district, the area of the High Street and the canal were all but unchanged. The cemetery occupied a good many acres at the base of this region and that was as immovable as cemeteries generally are. The canal formed a wedge through the centre and provided another hard argument against change. On the far side the small workshops and bigger factories had been so busy making goods and money during the nineteen-fifties and sixties that few thought of making any improvements. Now they had slowed with the recession; those who operated them were unwilling to finance re-planning or expansion. The High Street, grey and crowded, ran roughly on the same line as the canal, although it curved quickly to cross the waterway at its uppermost end before the power station. It was locked between the immovable and the immutable. To the south the cemetery, to the north the power station, to the west the canal and to the east the solid, three-and four-storey houses of the original Victorian town, including ‘Bali Hi’, Furtman Gardens (formerly called ‘Cranbrook Villa’ but renamed after Mrs Fulljames had fallen in love with Rossano Brazzi in the film version of South Pacific). It would be half-a-century before anyone thought of pulling those down.
And so the stage remained largely as it was that close night in July, 1951, when Celia Norris began her cycle journey home from the youth club. It was now a gritty October evening. Davies left the police station and after courteously declining the offer of a free intercourse from Venus, the evening star, he set off on foot for St Fridewide’s Catholic Church.
The youth club had been in the grounds of the church, indeed it still was, and the girl would have cycled from the main gate. He walked thoughtfully from there to the junction with the southern end of the High Street. The cemetery occupied about ten acres, fronting on the main road, at that point, all dead land. He went at a steady pace (he would cycle it, he decided, at some later time) but increased his step past the graveyard gates because he did not want to be forced into making an ex
planation to the miserable keeper about the misreading of the word ‘tomb’ for ‘bomb’. The man was bound to be uncharitable. He should introduce him to Mrs Fulljames one day.
At the conclusion of the cemetery there was the customary stonemason’s yard with a nice display of crosses and weepy angels, to catch the passing trade, and from this the haphazard High Street began its course. The smart, big, bright stores that grew up in the years of plenty, in the sixties, had found their home in other easier thoroughfares in Kilburn, Paddington and Cricklewood, leaving this street to the small grocers, the tobacconists, the fish-and-chip merchants, the humid cafés, the bright, cheap clothes shops, the betting shops, of course, and several long stretches occupied by the showrooms of second-hand car dealers, the vehicles and the salesmen smiling identical smiles from the open fronts of the premises.
The local newspaper, the Citizen, was uncomfortably accommodated in a house, once the residence of the neighbourhood’s only famous son, Miles Shaltoe, a writer of somewhat dubious novels who enjoyed a vogue in the early nineteen hundreds. There was a plaque commemorating his occupation under the fascia which proclaimed ‘North West London Citizen’ and in smaller letters ‘Every Friday’. There were also several ladies’ hairdressers, one boasting the title ‘Antoinette of Paris, Switzerland and Hemel Hempstead’. There were numerous public houses interpolated along the street, with the The Babe in Arms occupying a favoured position adjacent to the public conveniences, two cinemas, the more palatial of which now only featured Indian films, a West Indian Bongo Club and an English Bingo Club, a pawnshop, its avuncular balls first hung in 1896, and ‘The Healing Hands’ massage parlour, an establishment of more recent roots.
Despite attempts with paint and plastic to brighten it, the street was decayed and tired, sighing for the euthanasia of the demolition man’s flying ball. Davies walked along it, as he had many times in his past five years in that town, but now examining the upper windows and wondering if any eyes had looked down from their vantage on the final journey of Celia Norris.
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