‘Further inquiries,’ she mocked gently. ‘You can’t help sounding like a copper, can you?’ Then she said: ‘You remember that day by the Welsh Harp you told me that Percival was your proper name. Well it’s not, is it.’
‘I lied,’ he said. ‘It’s Peregrine.’
‘Bugger off,’ she sighed.
There was a long enclosed silence from within the coat. Then she said: ‘Dangerous, I’ve got something to tell you.’
He laughed gently and patted her on top of her head. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘I’ve found something out.’
‘What?’
‘My father does know where Ramscar is.’
He eased her away and looked down at the defined, pale face. ‘Where is he?’ he asked.
‘I said he knows, I don’t,’ she replied. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you. You’ve had enough beatings-up as it is. But I’ve begun thinking you ought to know.’
‘What’s he told you?’
‘I didn’t tell you before, but he had a heart attack yesterday. In the hospital. Brought on by being duffed up. It wasn’t much as heart attacks go, but it’s scared the living daylights out of him. He thinks he’ll die if he has another one. I went to see him and tonight he was in a terrible state. He’s got all confessional. He started doing the “my dearest daughter” act,’ she laughed caustically. ‘After all these bloody years.’ She glanced up at his chin. He was still waiting. ‘Ramscar’s up to something very big, according to the old man. And very soon.’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘I don’t know. Even the old man doesn’t. But I reckon he’s got a good idea where Ramscar is hanging out. That’s why he feels safer in hospital.’
‘He’s probably right,’ nodded Davies. He looked at her steadily. ‘Will you find out for me?’
She did not reply at once, but remained hidden inside his coat. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she told eventually. ‘But I’m not making any promises.’
‘If we know where he is we can wind up the whole business,’ said Davies. ‘Get him.’
‘Will you put your hands inside my dress for a minute, Dangerous?’ she asked. ‘If I undo the buttons.’
Bemused at her habitual change of direction he did not say anything. But she undid the buttons on the front of her dress, carefully, and took his hands and pushed them inside against some material covering her small breasts. He could feel the brief point of each nipple. He bent forward and kissed her on the face. ‘What’s this thing you’ve got underneath?’ he asked.
‘A vest,’ she responded simply. ‘My mum makes me wear a vest this weather. Even now she’s up at Luton I still wear it. A promise is a promise. She knitted it herself. Yards of it. It goes down for miles, Dangerous. Here, go on, give it a pull.’
Smiling, he did as she instructed. Using both hands he began to tug at the vest and it came up, and continued coming up, from somewhere in her nether regions. Josie giggled. ‘I told you. There’s yards of it. It’s like a bale of bloody cloth.’
Eventually the garment was assembled above her waist, making her dress bulge spectacularly. She laughed quietly and gave a mischievous wriggle. It fell down, dropping beyond her skirt and hanging to her knees. Davies clasped her to him. ‘Do you want to come in the house?’ she asked. ‘It’s empty.’
‘I thought you were staying with some other family,’ he said anxiously. ‘I hope you’re not in the house by yourself.’
‘I’m not,’ she assured him. ‘I’m living with the Fieldings two doors up. But I’ve still got our key.’
‘It’s time you got some sleep,’ he said gently. He put his arms protectively about her. ‘When it’s all done,’ he said. ‘All finished. Then I’m going to take some leave.’
‘And you’ll take me too?’
‘If you’ll come. When I was a boy I was sent up to Stoke-on-Trent once. I’ve always thought of going back.’
‘It sounds dreamy,’ she said. ‘I’ve still got a week of my holiday to come. Stoke-on-Trent!’
‘You’d better go,’ he said. They kissed seriously and he helped her to tuck the extraordinary vest away. Then they walked along the street to the house where she was staying. He said good-night and she went into the house. He had walked a few yards down the street when the door opened behind him and Josie came out again to the pavement. ‘Dangerous,’ she called. There was something different in her voice. ‘The hospital phoned. He’s had another heart attack. I’ve got to go.’
He waited until two o’clock in the painfully familiar surroundings of the hospital. It was cold and desolate in the waiting room. When she came out he saw that she had dried tears smudged about her eyes.
‘He snuffed it,’ she said. ‘Six minutes past one.’
He had often wondered at the curiosity of people recording the exact weight of a baby at birth and the precise time of death. Why not the time of birth and the weight at death? ‘I’m sorry, Josie,’ he said, drawing her kindly to him.
‘He thought I was Celia,’ she shrugged.
He telephoned for a taxi and they sat in the waiting room until it arrived. They said very little either there or on the journey to the house of her friends. As she got out of the taxi and the front door of the house opened, she kissed him dumbly on the cheek. ‘Ramscar’s at a place called Bracken Farm,’ she said. ‘Uxbridge way.’
It was ten miles away, part of the dead land between the town and the eventual country, a place of pig farms, scrap yards, small untidy fields and struggling hedgerows: Davies collected the Lagonda and drove out there through the cold, early hours. Kitty moaned grotesquely for the first part of the journey, taking unhappily to being disturbed, but then settled to a bronchial sleep under the tarpaulin once more. Davies did not tell anyone he was going. It hardly occurred to him. He had his own score to settle.
He had telephoned the Uxbridge fire brigade to find out the farm’s location. He did not want to ask the police. It was at the end of a rutted lane off the main Oxford road. He drove down it carefully, headlights out, threading the Lagonda between piles of rubbish, wrecked vehicles and other peripheral trash. There was a gipsy encampment one field away and his approach set some dogs baying. He cursed them. He could see lights ahead, a high illuminated window, which he thought might be a watching point. He pulled the car close into a farm gate and went studiously forward on foot.
Everything about him smelled damp. Mud eased from beneath his feet with stifled sighs. There were two big cars standing in the yard of the farm. The house looked substantial but unkempt even at night. Apart from the light in the high upper window there were two lit but curtained windows on the ground floor. He moved, large but silent, into the yard. He touched the bonnet of the nearest car. It was warm. So was the next one. He intended to try and get to the window, but he guessed there would be someone left outside to keep guard. He saw the man come around the corner of the house while he was shadowed by the cars. The man was lighting a cigarette and grumbling to himself. Davies got on his hands and knees and shuffled to the door of what looked to be an outside lavatory. It was a coalhouse. His eyes were accustomed now to the dark. There was a scattering of coal on the floor and a coal shovel by the wall.
Davies could hear the man moving about outside. Then he walked right past the open door of the outhouse. Davies picked up the shovel. It was the normal household implement, fashioned from one piece of metal, the handle formed by turning the metal into a short tube. Pointing the tube forward, Davies left his concealment. The man was standing only four yards away smoking and looking out to the anonymity of the ragged night. Davies approached and pushed the circular end of the shovel into the pit of the watcher’s back.
The man went stiff, but he could feel the round impression well enough. ‘Drop your shooter on the ground,’ said Davies. ‘Behind you.’ With a shrug the man reached in his pocket and dropped his gun on Davies’s toe. Davies picked it up.
‘Right, we’re going to walk towards the house.’
The man spoke.
‘The whole lot’s in there,’ he said quietly as if trying to convey a favour. ‘If there’s any shooting, mate, I don’t want to be in it. I don’t reckon this fucking thing at all.’
‘How many?’ asked Davies.
‘Seven,’ said the man.
‘I’ve got the place surrounded by hundreds,’ Davies told him. ‘Just walk. Now.’
They progressed gingerly along the narrow path of the farm’s front garden, like partners on a high wire. Fifteen feet from the door was an empty dustbin. Davies noted it grimly. Then he whispered for his captive to stop. ‘I’m going to make things difficult for you, son,’ he said quietly. ‘But, get this, if you try anything, or make a row, I’ll shoot you. Got that?’
‘Got it,’ nodded the man. Davies bent and sweetly put the dustbin over the man’s head and shoulders. The man shivered and staggered for a moment, but recovered and stood there like some strange midnight robot. Davies jogged him forward with the coal shovel. He had the gun but he used the shovel in case the man should know the gun was not loaded. They went to the door.
It was a big Georgian door and Davies saw with satisfaction that his dustbinned prisoner would be able to get in. There was a low brass doorknob. He turned it and the door swung in. He pushed the man forward into the room. ‘My old man’s a dustman,’ he announced walking in behind him. ‘Anyone move and they’re a goner.’
A group of men were sitting around a table eating fish and chips. All the faces came up and around to him. He recognized Ramscar at once. ‘I’ve come for you, Ramscar,’ he said.
‘Fuck it,’ said Ramscar taking a chip from his mouth.
A small, tanned man, sitting at the near side of the table suddenly jumped up and, with a wild cry, ran towards Davies. Davies banged him on his approaching head with the coal shovel, but the diversion had been enough. In a moment they had rushed him. They came like a rugby scrum flying across the room. They hit him from all directions at once and he felt himself reeling. There were shots and he felt his legs burning. Then lights. But somehow more logical than the usual exploding lights in his head. Someone shouted: ‘Piss off, there’s coppers outside.’
Before he tumbled to what he now recognized as unconsciousness Davies looked up to see the face of a strange police inspector. ‘Just right,’ Davies managed to smile. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Great,’ grunted the inspector. ‘Except the bloke you crowned with the shovel is a bloody American ambassador.’
The desk sergeant was looking through the crime book for the local reporter when Davies propelled his wheeled chair through the police station door. The lady cleaner and Venus, who was just on her way to her evening patrol, had helped him up the outside steps.
‘Interesting one here,’ said the sergeant. ‘Theft of rare minute palms from Kew Gardens. General to all stations, this…’ He saw Davies and came round the counter to shake his hand. ‘So glad you’re all right, Dangerous. The old man’s upstairs. I’ll help you with the lift.’
The sergeant and the reporter got him into the lift. He knocked on Inspector Yardbird’s door with his toe and after the customary pause Yardbird called him to go in.
His wheeled chair rolled through the office door. They had re-bandaged his head and set his right leg and left ankle in plaster. There was not much they could do about the bruising on his ribs except let it heal. The nurses had given him a joke season-ticket to the hospital.
Yardbird looked up from behind his desk. ‘Ah, jolly good. I think we did jolly well, Davies,’ he said.
Davies moved his head gingerly. ‘Yes, sir, I think we did.’
‘We…ee…ll, we got Ramscar, which was the whole object of my plan from the very beginning, as you will appreciate, Davies. And that’s a feather in the cap of the division. On the other hand to hit a United States diplomat on the head with a coal shovel was pretty unfortunate.’
‘I’m sorry,’ shrugged Davies. Every movement seemed to hurt. ‘I didn’t know who he was. I thought he was one of the gang. Nobody told me.’
‘We couldn’t tell every Tom, Dick and Harry, Davies,’ yawned Yardbird. ‘It would have been gossiped all around the place. We knew that Ramscar was lying low because he was involved in something big, much bigger than anything he had done before. We knew he had become involved with what we call “Overseas Interests” you understand.’
‘Yes. I understand,’ said Davies.
‘And these Interests had decided to kidnap this American wallah on his way to the Airport. Which they did, of course, but fortunately we nailed them.’
‘Oh yes, we nailed them,’ replied Davies.
‘Quite a feather in the cap of the division, as I mentioned.’
‘Yes sir, you said.’
‘Once I’d got you to actually concentrate on the proper job in hand, it worked like a charm, didn’t it? We got Ramscar.’ For the first time Yardbird got from behind his desk. He kicked the wheel of the invalid chair as though to make sure it was safe. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘As I’ve said before this is all good experience for you.’
‘Great experience,’ agreed Davies.
‘How long will it be?’ He pushed his expression in the general direction of Davies’s injuries. ‘Couple of weeks?’
‘Two months, they say,’ said Davies. ‘And a bit of convalescence just to get the feel of my legs again. I may go to Stoke-on-Trent.’
‘You’ll like that,’ muttered Yardbird absently. ‘In the meantime perhaps you’d like to give your thoughts to the business of who stole that brass bedstead from your lodgings. And the antique hallstand. That landlady of yours, what’s her name, Mrs Brownjohn?’
‘Mrs. Fulljames,’ said Davies.
‘Yes, her. Stupid old cow. Button-holed me at the Chamber of Commerce Dinner the other evening and demanded that something be done about it. It does look a bit bad, I suppose actually having a CID man in the house and having unsolved crime hanging about. Have you given it any consideration at all?’
‘I’ve thought of very little else,’ replied Davies. It did not appear to penetrate. Yardbird appeared submerged in worries.
‘And there was another thing, while you’re here. That idiotic dog of yours. It bit three policemen during the raid on the farm.’
Davies nodded. ‘I know. It doesn’t like coppers. It’s had a go at me before now.’
‘Well you must control it, you know. If not, have it put down. Might be the best way in the end. Get you into no end of bother.’
Davies said: ‘Right, I’ll see he behaves. And I’ll think about the brass bedstead. Can I go now, sir? My arms get tired.’
‘Yes, yes. Off you go. I’m busy as hell. And…Davies…’
‘Sir?’
‘Keep out of aggravation, eh?’
As he went through the corridor Davies could clearly hear Yardbird laughing at his own joke.
Father Harvey trundled Davies in his wheeled chair alongside the canal. Davies was glad of the privacy because their progress through the High Street had been approaching the triumphal. People he did not recognize, but who clearly knew him intimately, approached to inquire about his injuries and to shake his hand. Mr Chrust appeared at the door of the newspaper office and had shown him a copy of the Citizen embellished by Davies’s chair-borne photograph, while from the upper windows the sisters-in-law waved in bright sympathy. Madame Tarantella Phelps-Smith hooted greetings from her door and shouted clairvoyant encouragement: ‘You’ll be better soon. Your lucky colour is blue! Blue!’ Even his wife Doris, shopping with Mrs Fulljames, had come out of the bakers and given him a jam doughnut. ‘It’s getting like the Entry of the Queen of Sheba,’ commented Father Harvey.
Josie joined them at the canal bridge and helped to get the wheeled chair down the inclined path to the canal bank. She walked with them hungrily nuzzling a lunchbag.
‘I hear through my excellent intelligence services that a police award is to be made to you,’ mentioned the priest. ‘So your wounds will not have been entirely in vain.’
‘Listen, Yardbird wouldn’t recommend anyone for a sick pass let alone an award,’ observed Davies. It was a nice day for that town at that time of year. Ducks followed the fitful sunshine on the straight water. Josie emptied the crumbs from her lunchbag into the canal. The ducks clamoured as though it were already spring.
‘Somebody over the top of Yardbird has put you up,’ said Father Harvey. ‘I get to know these things. The confessional is not merely for the telling of sins, you know, Dangerous. It is useful for handy tit-bits of information.’
‘How’s the confessional box anyway?’ inquired Davies over his shoulder.
‘The new one is fine. Never heard better confessions. But the one I built myself was more frail than the parishioners, I’m afraid. Mrs Bryant, who becomes a trifle histrionic during the unburdening of her soul, put her elbow through one of the panels. So I rang the bishop and kicked up bloody hell and they’ve sent a new portable effort, in plastic you’ll know, pending the arrival of a proper replacement. It was there in that plastic shell, that I heard the whisper of your impending award.’
‘Award?’ Davies grinned. ‘I’m the mug who did it all wrong. If Josie hadn’t telephoned the police to say I was on my way to Bracken Farm I’d still be there now. Buried under the cowshed.’
His voice slowed as they approached the footbridge, the three of them, the priest, the policeman and the poppet, and fifteen yards away, beyond the allotment hedge, Celia Norris was buried. He glanced at Josie. She was devouring a yoghurt from a small tub. ‘I thought you’d have the sense to go with other coppers,’ she said. A strawberry blob squatted on her chin, like Celia again. She wiped it away. ‘I thought even you would have the bleeding gumption to do that, Dangerous. But then, when I got in the house, I thought probably you wouldn’t have the bleeding gumption. So I rang nine-nine-nine.’
Although they talked, Davies’s awareness of their location and his sadness because of it, seeped to the others. They turned at the bridge and, now silent, went back the way they came. The ducks, spotting their return, queued up hopefully. A water rat dropped without fuss into the brown depths. ‘Dangerous,’ said Josie suddenly. ‘How old is Doris?’
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