Last Detective

by Thomas, Leslie

  Like a shock it hit him. Inside, brown and broken and brittle, were the remains of a bunch of flowers.

  ‘They were in there when he brought it,’ said Madame Tarantella beyond his shoulder. ‘Chrysanthemums and a few irises. They had a card with them, but I threw that away. I think she must have got them from the cemetery.’

  ‘Her mother said she brought her flowers,’ murmured Davies. ‘I wondered where she picked them.’

  ‘Flowers,’ said Mod softly. ‘Well, well, fancy them still being there.’ He was looking into his glass, both he and Davies keeping their heads down from the suspicion and bale in the face of the landlord. He knew who it was who had demolished his drainpipe.

  ‘She must have gone into the cemetery regularly on her way home from the youth club,’ said Davies. ‘To take flowers to her mother. I was wondering where she could have picked the flowers in this neighbourhood.’

  ‘That means she went over the wall or the gates. Being at night,’ said Mod.

  ‘She must have.’

  ‘That night without her knickers.’

  ‘Apparently so.’

  ‘Where are we then?’

  Davies sighed. ‘Yes, where are we! Well, we’ve got three neo-suspects. None of them fit but they’re all vaguely in the running. Just vaguely. Start from the back. Our friend Boot. Now Boot did some naughty things, and to Celia Norris among others. But he says he didn’t kill her.’

  ‘That’s a fine recommendation,’ mumbled Mod, his face semi-submerged in his beer. When he peered over the surface of the drink he looked like an otter swimming half below the top of a pool. ‘You’ll take his word for it?’

  ‘No. But he told me everything, well, nearly everything, the other night. By the time I’d done with him I had him banging on his mum’s door crying to be let in. Not a pretty sight. I don’t think it was him, despite all the other bits and pieces, unless he’s been craftier than I think he is. But one thing he won’t tell. He won’t say what he did with her pants. He says he can’t remember.’

  ‘And you believe that?’ Mod grumbled. ‘If you’ll swallow that you’ll swallow anything.’

  ‘I could swallow another pint,’ said Davies absently. Mod braved the landlord’s eye and asked for more beer. The landlord filled the glasses with ill-grace and slammed them down in front of them on the bar. ‘Drinking I can understand,’ he said bitterly. ‘Vandalism, I can’t.’

  Mod and Davies exchanged expressions brimmed with innocent incomprehension. ‘Some people never know when they’ve had enough,’ Davies called agreeably at the publican’s retreating back. He returned to Mod. ‘No, he remembers what he did with them, all right. That will come. He may have gone with her from the youth club—at this distance nobody can remember seeing him or not seeing him that night. It’s twenty-five years after all. He could have walked with her as far as the cemetery wall and there the dirty deed was done. I don’t know, Mod. But I somehow don’t think so. I don’t think he did it. But I’ve still got him on the string. I don’t think he’s having a very carefree life at the moment.’

  The rough woman who sang ‘Viva España’, her foot still a club of plaster, charged her way like a squat bull through the bar door and made for the juke box. She could have pressed the tab with her eyes closed. Her heavy hips began to jerk even as the first bars of the song shot from the machine. She banged her way down the bar clapping her hands above her head like blocks of wood.

  ‘Then Ramscar,’ said Davies determinedly. ‘It might really have been Ramscar. He could have fixed that alibi, no trouble. And he bobs up all the time, except nobody knows where he is. He knows I’m looking for him. Who but our Cecil would have arranged the dustbin blitz on me? Only Ramscar has that sort of mind or organization.’

  Mod was watching the rough woman’s performance with calm scorn. ‘One day,’ he forecast. ‘She’s going to drop dead right in this bar. And I for one will go and stamp up and down on her prostrate body.’ He returned to Davies. ‘How about Parsons? Reformed undie-thief? Perhaps it was his Salvation Army mates who shanghaied you.’

  ‘I haven’t finished with Parsons, either,’ nodded Davies. ‘We’ll have another chat before long. And we’ve still got Bill Lind!’

  ‘Ah, the boyfriend. I was wondering when he would come up.’

  ‘Madam,’ called Davies to the rough woman. ‘If you don’t stop carrying on in that manner I will arrest you for being disorderly in a public place.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ replied the lady of Spain. ‘At least I don’t go pulling people’s bloody drainpipes off the walls.’

  ‘Bill Lind,’ said Davies, returning at once to Mod. ‘Well I’m going to wait until Bill Lind comes to me. I’m sure he will.’

  ‘And…’ said the woman now truculent, leaning towards them, all the pride of Andalusia gone. ‘Nor do I put a fucking horse in somebody’s fucking front passage either. And I don’t dive in the fucking canal with a fucking dustbin on my fucking head!’

  She did not wait for them to react or reply. She stumped towards the door and with a final smashing of her hands above her head and a sluggish whirl of her dirty hung skirt, she went out. They heard her shout ‘Bollocks’ from the street.

  ‘That,’ observed Mod, ‘is known as the Iberian clap.’ He brought his hands together above his sparse dome.

  ‘And that brings me to Fred Fennell,’ went on Davies. ‘What about Fred Fennell? A strange tale. And Celia’s bike being there. Did Fred do her in after creeping, heavy with police party drink, unsatisfied from the arms of Madame Tarantella? He was only a few minutes, remember. He and James Dudley always shared that nice, cosy little duty, cruising around in that van. One would go off and do his thing, then the other. A convenient and simple arrangement, and it passed the lonely hours. That night, as we’ve seen, they both called into the police farewell party and had a few, despite the fact that they were supposed to be on duty. That’s nothing new. Policemen can be very unofficial at times.’

  Mod said: ‘He could have gone out of the flat and walked up the street, past the cemetery and seen Celia, with no pants, coming over the wall with a bunch of nicked funeral flowers. It all happens then. Afterwards he quietly wheels the bike to Madame Tarantella’s place.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound bad,’ Davies agreed. ‘Not bad at all. But it could just as easily have been the other copper, who did it—Dudley. Remember, nobody remembers seeing Celia from the time she left the youth club. People were asked to say if they’d seen a girl on a bike. Well, she wasn’t on her bike. That was left outside the boneyard. She could have been in the police van with PC Dudley.’

  ‘And what’s happened to him?’ inquired Mod. He had drained his glass and was moving it around, revolving it, in a fidgety way. Davies steeled himself to look at the landlord and two more pints were grudgingly delivered.

  ‘Dudley, James Dudley, took himself and his family off to Australia. Emigrated twenty years ago. He liked the seaside. They wanted to go to Torquay but they couldn’t afford it. He joined the police force in Sydney and worked with the vice squad until eight years ago, when he died when a brothel caught fire.’

  ‘Died on duty, eh?’ Mod nodded.

  ‘Off duty,’ corrected Davies. ‘He’d been suspended on suspicion of accepting bribes.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Mod as if he knew the man personally.

  Davies spread his hands. ‘And that’s about the lot. I’ve told you everything now, friend.’

  ‘Celia,’ ruminated Mod. ‘She appears in As You Like It and she’s in Spenser’s Faerie Queene also. Derived from “Caelia”, Latin, which means “Heavenly girl”. I looked it up.’

  ‘It’s grand living in a library,’ acknowledged Davies. ‘Heavenly girl, eh?’

  Mod looked up at the clock. ‘Nearly closing time,’ he observed. ‘We must get back at the proper hour tonight.’ He raised his voice so it carried to the landlord. ‘Otherwise you get the blame for all manner of incidents and accidents.’ Then quietly he said to Davies. ‘Y
ou know where I think she’s buried?’

  ‘Where they’re all buried,’ sighed Davies.

  ‘In the cemetery,’ said Mod.

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Davies.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Josie was lying in wait for him outside the saloon bar, insinuated in the doorway like a loitering child. She was wearing an oilskin and a sou-wester against the commonplace evening drizzle.

  ‘Did you guess it was me?’ she asked when she and Davies were walking hunched towards the town. Mod had bidden them good-night and trudged the other way.

  ‘I mistook you for a small lifeboatman,’ replied Davies. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I’m going to show you something,’ she said, pushing along in the dark. She seemed very slight at his side. ‘I’ve been looking for you from the window at work but you don’t seem to have been around.’

  He did not know why he felt so guilty about her. ‘I’ve been kept busy,’ he said. ‘Inquiries. I’m still on the trail of Mr Ramscar—except there’s no trail. I’ve done the grand tour, strip joints, clip joints, dip joints, places I wouldn’t like to tell my mother about I’ve been to…’

  ‘Ramscar’s been threatening my mum,’ she interrupted bluntly. ‘She won’t be able to speak to you any more.’

  ‘Ramscar!’ He halted like a guardsman in the road. They were just crossing and a bus, like a bright, businesslike dragon, came hissing at them. Josie pulled him across. ‘Ramscar?’ he said when they got to the pavement not noticing the bus driver shaking his fist. ‘Where is he hiding? Do you know?’

  ‘Nobody knows,’ she shrugged, and continued walking. ‘He just sends messages. My old man is petrified. He’s scared to go out of the house. They know he talked to you.’

  ‘Tell your mum and dad not to move,’ said Davies. He was worried now. ‘We ought to get a copper to watch the house.’

  ‘No! That would be worse. They won’t move, don’t worry. I have to take food into them.’

  ‘Ramscar,’ he muttered again. ‘I’d really like to know where he is.’ Suddenly aware of her smallness and vulnerability he said, ‘What about you?

  ‘Oh me,’ she laughed. ‘Ramscar don’t worry me, Dangerous. I’d just tell him to piss off. Him or any of his mates.’ She turned around in the rain, the bright sixpenny face framed in the outsized rim of the oilskin hat, brash, cheeky, confident and without defence. Celia again.

  ‘You lie low,’ he said. ‘And if you get a whiff of trouble ring me, or anyone at the nick, at once. All right?’

  She grinned at him. ‘All right, Dangerous,’ she said. ‘He’s not after me, don’t worry. But I’ll let you be a big brother if that’s what you want.’ She took some keys from her raincoat pocket. ‘We’re going in the salon,’ she said seriously, walking on ahead of him. ‘There’s something I think you ought to see.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Wait for it. It’s a hoot,’ she said. ‘You’ll see.’ She opened the downstairs door and walked concisely up the narrow stairs to the first floor. She was just ahead of him, the still wet rim of her raincoat almost touching his nose. ‘You’ve been avoiding me,’ she grumbled confidently as she went up. ‘You’ve been keeping out of my way. And it’s not just Ramscar, either.’

  He felt hollow and heavy and old. ‘I told you I’ve been busy,’ he muttered. ‘Anyway you’re seventeen, Josie.’

  She halted on the stairs one leg just ahead of him and looked back scornfully. ‘Seventeen,’ she said, ‘is not seven. At seventeen you can do all sorts of things, you know. Look at Celia.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ he said wearily. She had begun to step up the stairs again and, on reaching the landing, switched on the lights and walked into the hairdressing salon. He followed her and looked around. The chairs were lined up like a battery of anti-aircraft guns, each one with its attendant hairdrier like a doused searchlight. ‘Take that awful overcoat off,’ she said. ‘If ever I marry you, Dangerous, that overcoat’s going to be the first to go.’

  He ignored the remark and sat tiredly in one of the chairs. He read the reversed lettering on the windows facing him. Josie had gone somewhere into the back of the salon. He called out to her. ‘Why does she call herself Antoinette of Paris, Switzerland and Hemel Hempstead? How come Paris and Switzerland?’

  He could not see her. She was doing something in the shadows behind him. ‘It’s just a bit of swank,’ she called out. ‘She went to winter sports in Switzerland once and she didn’t like the snow. She kept falling down. So she stayed in the hotel and did people’s hair. I don’t know what she did in Paris. Did a shampoo and set there once, I expect. Probably for herself.’

  ‘What are you doing back there?’ he asked from the chair. He was regarding himself in the ladies’ mirror and thinking how pale and bulky he looked. She called back. ‘Won’t be a minute. Just on the wall in front of you is a switch, Dangerous. When I tell you, you switch it on. Not till I tell you, though.’

  ‘Playing games,’ he grumbled.

  ‘How’s Kitty?’ she called from the shadow.

  ‘Bad chest and bad disposition.’

  ‘How’s Mod? I like Mod.’

  ‘You’ve only just seen Mod…’

  ‘Right, Dangerous. Now. The switch!’

  He did as she had instructed, leaning out of the chair and putting down the switch. The salon fell into darkness and a moment later a spotlight from the ceiling hit the floor by the entrance, fifteen feet away. He waited.

  Josie jumped like a child dancer into the light. He cried out, horrified, when he saw her. She was wearing her murdered sister’s clothes. The green gingham dress, the white socks and the brown shoes buckled across the instep. She stood, grinning in the saucer of light. Celia Norris!

  ‘Oh…oh, Christ,’ he said and tried to back away further into the chair. ‘Oh…why…what did you do that for?’

  ‘I found them,’ Josie said triumphantly. ‘I found where my mum had hidden them. And I tried them on and they fitted. To the inch, Dangerous!’

  She turned daintily in the circle. He still sat dumbstruck at what she had done. ‘It’s like one of them identi-kit things,’ she laughed then paused, leaning forward to peer from the light to the dark at him. ‘Are you still watching?’

  ‘Yes I’m still watching,’ he said, his mouth like stone. There was a trembling within himself, as if he were a mountain.

  ‘Watch this then,’ she laughed. He knew too well what she would do. She twirled like a little dancer and let the short skirt of the dress fly out. ‘No pants,’ she giggled eerily. ‘No pants, either.’ He stared desolately at her. She revolved more slowly a second time. The slim legs down to the ankles and the white socks and shoes, and up to the miniature thighs. Daintily she held the skirt and pirouetted once more. The globes of her bottom were small, contoured in the light and shadow. Again she turned. The slightly protruding belly and the darker shadow of hair at the top of her legs.

  ‘Stop it!’ he bellowed rising from the chair. He caught his head an idiotic clanging blow on the overhanging hairdrier. He heard her laugh like an echo and cried again. ‘Stop it, Josie. Do you hear me. Stop…’

  She did as he asked. She stopped and walked from the light to the dim towards him, on tiptoe. She stood in front of him in the thin dress. He squeezed his eyes together. ‘You shouldn’t…’ he muttered. ‘For God’s sake…’

  ‘I thought I told you to take your coat off,’ she answered practically. She bent over towards him and he could smell the mothballs from the dress. He wanted to touch it, to feel the material, but his hands would not move. She undid the clumsy buttons on his overcoat and divided it open. The, she climbed on to his lap, in a kneeling position, her thin knees on his trousers, her body like a twig, her arms slim around his thick neck, her face looking intently into his. He could not stop himself then. He allowed his hands to touch her, bringing them around, still encased in the ridiculous tunnels of the overcoat sleeves, and resting his fingers on her hips. Th
e feel of the gingham went through him like a shock. So thin he could feel her hipbones protruding like a cowboy’s guns. ‘Oh hell…’ he said hollowly. ‘Oh bloody hell.’

  At that she moved her face to his, smooth against tough, and pressed her thin body into his chest. His hands fell down the murderous dress and enveloped the softness of her naked bottom. He held her there while they both trembled. He could feel her young tears running down his face. He pulled her away and looked at her. Her smudged face and the clothes.

  Had Celia wept that night long ago?

  In the CID room at the police station the detectives were all trying on suits, the proceeds of a thwarted robbery. There was an atmosphere akin to the fitting room of a busy tailor’s shop, with comparisons of cloth, style and cut, being bandied about. Davies sat down quietly and wrote a short and almost entirely fanciful report of his efforts to locate Ramscar.

  ‘Pity there wasn’t an overcoat among this stuff, Dangerous,’ observed one of the young, successful, detectives, smart in a pinstripe. ‘Yours is going green with mould.’

  ‘It’s comfortable,’ shrugged Davies, putting his report in the file for Inspector Yardbird’s office. ‘I’ve sort of settled into it now. I don’t think I could get used to a new one.’ He left them to their fashions and went out and walked towards the cemetery.

  It was a good day for visiting the dead. A damaged sky scattered over his immediate area of the world, a sky black but riven with chasms of jagged sunshine, a sky shrieking with dark winds. Wagner might have put it to music.

  Davies, however, whistled a simple but jaunty sea-shanty (‘Come cheer up my lads, ’tis to glory we steer’) as he parked the Lagonda in the half-circle of road at the cemetery gates. The grave keeper came immediately from his small mausoleum-like house at the gate and pointed at the car. Kitty, the unfumigated Kitty, raised itself blandly and blindly in the back seat, looked around and with a surge of disinterest fell down again to customary sloth.