Gently in Trees

by Alan Hunter

  Gently stared. ‘What happened next?’

  Webster’s grey eyes gleamed. ‘You’re being unkind, fuzz. Like I’m only trying to straighten you out.’

  ‘So tell me what happened.’

  ‘I love him,’ Webster said. ‘I went home to my sack too. Across the river in old Battersea, a seagull’s poop from Father Thames. Any comeback?’

  Gently said nothing.

  ‘I love all fuzz,’ Webster said. ‘They bring out the mother in me. Getting bust by fuzz is like sexual.’

  Nina Walling snatched her head impatiently. ‘But all this is so much nonsense! Daddy was in Brighton, that’s flat, and obviously you believe it too. Because if you don’t, why are you here, and leaving Daddy to a subordinate? It’s because you expect an arrest at this end, and from all I know, you’re absolutely right.’

  ‘Then you no longer believe that Mr Stoll committed suicide?’

  ‘That was my theory, fuzz,’ Webster said. ‘It could be either way, but if it’s a killing, then you have to agree with Nina. Somebody out here stood to lose a lot, and that somebody knew where to find Adrian. Like it sticks out past Christmas. You aren’t even trying to hang it on Oscar.’

  ‘In that case, Mr Walling has nothing to worry about.’

  Yah,’ Webster said. ‘But he has. Oscar is too hung up to be thinking sense. He has to know for sure that you’ve crossed him off.’

  Gently slowly shook his head. ‘I can’t give Mr Walling clearance. Not even if he did happen to be in Brighton.’

  ‘Even if we could prove it to you?’ Nina Walling snapped.

  ‘That fact alone doesn’t clear him.’

  They gazed at Gently: Nina Walling furiously, Webster with alert, probing eyes.

  ‘Yah?’ he said. ‘How’s that?’

  Gently shrugged, and swivelled his chair to face away from them.

  ‘Your father is a man of wide connections, Miss Walling. In the spectrum of finance they come in all colours. At certain levels a man’s life is a commodity, and it was one that your father could easily afford.’

  ‘But that – that’s just crazy!’ Nina Walling burst out.

  ‘Not at all, Miss Walling. We think it very likely.’

  ‘But you can’t – it’s ludicrous!’

  ‘The pattern is familiar. And your father was a desperate man.’

  ‘Oh boy!’ Webster said. ‘Oh boy!’

  ‘Listen,’ Nina Walling said. ‘It’s just utterly fantastic! Daddy doesn’t mix with that sort of people. All right, he knows plenty who have been on the fiddle, but not thugs and murderers. Daddy isn’t like that. He’s a refined person; he has a horror of violence and violent people. You just don’t know him, that’s all, and it’s so ridiculous that I could weep.’

  ‘You are convinced that your father has no criminal connections?’

  ‘Oh lord – yes, yes!’

  Gently swung back to her. ‘So that would leave us with amateur confederates. Which the style of the crime seems to suggest.’

  Her green eyes popped at him; her mouth set tight. Two points of pallor appeared over her cheekbones.

  Webster gave a sardonic chuckle. ‘Nicely taken, fuzz!’ he said softly.

  ‘You follow my point?’ Gently said.

  ‘Yah, yah, she follows it,’ Webster said. ‘Like Oscar had friends who might have helped out. No need to take a sledge-hammer, fuzz.’

  Gently’s eyes stayed fixed on Nina Walling’s. ‘Friends or acquaintances,’ he said. ‘Among them some who were no friends of Mr Stoll’s, perhaps some who believed he had done them an injury. And among those people one more callous, more vindictive than the rest: one with a deep and permanent resentment, perhaps freshly inflamed by recent developments. Does that suggest anyone to you, Miss Walling? Among your father’s acquaintances – and yours?’

  Webster laughed harshly. ‘Say the odd two dozen, or like anyone who Adrian had been working with lately.’

  Nina Walling was staring with eyes in which the pupils had gone small.

  ‘One special person,’ Gently persisted. ‘Because probably it was only the one person – who may have suggested the measure to your father; may have counted on your father taking the blame?’

  ‘Oh, he’s so lovely,’ Webster said. ‘What a shame it’s only a dream, fuzz.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you know him?’ Gently said. ‘Would it be possible for you not to know him?’

  Nina Walling opened her mouth and closed it again. Her long fingers twitched at her loose gown. Her eyes winced and tried to drag clear, but Gently held them in a steady stare.

  ‘I . . . it’s so senseless!’ She faltered, at last.

  ‘Tell me the name of that person, Miss Walling.’

  ‘No . . . there is no person! Daddy wouldn’t . . . it’s unthinkable.’

  ‘But someone you suspect – though your father is innocent?’

  ‘No!’ She began mechanically shaking her head.

  ‘Someone you know, with a different motive?’

  ‘No – nobody! It’s all nonsense.’

  ‘Oh these fuzz, these fuzz,’ Webster jeered. ‘Like how they try to pitch a curve. Jacking the words into your mouth for you. Pulling a deal out of nowhere. Why not ask me the questions, fuzz?’

  Gently swivelled quickly. ‘Right. I’m asking.’

  ‘And like I’m going to give you a tip, fuzz. Just keep up the pressure on Lawrence Turner.’

  ‘Turner.’ Gently sat quite still. ‘What do you know about Turner?’

  ‘Am I hitting the mark?’ Webster crowed. ‘Maybe your fuzz-eye is on him already.’ He leered through his tent of hair. ‘I know Lawrence Turner,’ he said. ‘Met him when I’ve been down here at the Lodge, then a time or two up in town. He was big with Adrian – know that, fuzz? And Adrian was very big with him. But Adrian wasn’t as big as Jennifer Britton, who was, like, going to be turned out in the rain. And Turner’s a queer kid, you know that? He flips his lid at low temperature. He flipped in a pub bar one night and it took three of us to hold him. So that’s my tip, fuzz. Lean on Turner. He’s the cat who’s most likely. Maybe there’s others who have a finger in it, but Lawrence Turner is your gasman.’ He sprawled back against the window, eyes mocking, though still alert.

  ‘Thank you,’ Gently said dryly.

  ‘Yah, I love all fuzz,’ Webster said. ‘So like now you can stop bullying Nina, and even give her what she came for.’

  ‘The answer is still the same,’ Gently said.

  ‘Which is a right buzz-fuzz answer,’ Webster said. ‘And you can stuff it, because you’ve let out one thing. You’re seeing the action from out here.’

  ‘From everywhere,’ Gently said. ‘I hope.’

  ‘Yah, but Turner in close shot,’ Webster said. ‘You didn’t need that tip from me, because Turner is where you’ve got your dough.’ He came up off the chair. ‘You through with him, Nina?’

  ‘Oh lord, yes,’ Nina Walling said. ‘I’ve had all the policemen I can take for one morning. This one isn’t so subtle after all.’ She rose too.

  ‘Bye, bye,’ Webster said. ‘Always a pleasure to chat up the fuzz. If you step across to the Sun I’ll buy you a lunch – like swede salad with roast pig.’

  He opened the door. Gently said nothing. Webster held it open for Nina Walling. Nina Walling swept through, her chin in the air, and Webster leered before following her out. The door closed; Gently reached for his pipe. He began to fill it with deliberate fingers.

  A couple of minutes passed and the pipe was going before Metfield ventured on a comment. Then he rose, lightly flexed his muscles, and came to perch on a corner of the desk. He looked wistfully at Gently.

  ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Gently said.

  ‘I’m thinking I’d like to work that chummie over. Also that he knows a lot more than he’s told us.’

  Gently nodded over his pipe. ‘Those are roughly my sentiments. He knows what makes this scene t
ick.’

  ‘And about Turner,’ Metfield said. ‘Especially about Turner. I reckon he could give us Turner, if he had a mind to.’ He paused, snapping his fingers. ‘Did Webster seem a bit familiar to you, sir?’

  Gently glanced at him curiously. ‘A bit. I’ve been puzzling to think where I might have seen him.’

  Metfield’s thick features folded in a grin. ‘You saw him here, sir. In Latchford. But that would be thirteen years ago, so it’s small wonder you couldn’t place him.’

  Gently gripped his pipe tightly. ‘He was one of that crowd?’

  ‘Yes, sir. One of the Jeebies. Used to ride around with Dicky Deeming, who killed himself in Five Mile Drove. But Webster was only a stringer, sir, so perhaps you wouldn’t have seen much of him.’

  Gently drew some fierce puffs. ‘Tell me what you know about Webster.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Metfield said. ‘He’s a Londoner, properly, his family moved up here with the first overspill. Webster was a Teddie when he came here, then he kind of graduated to the Jeebies – Speed Twin, black leathers, all that sort of caper.’

  ‘Any record?’ Gently said.

  ‘Just speeding a few times,’ Metfield said regretfully. ‘He wasn’t in that punch-up in the Market Place, when they tried to snatch Bixley off you. Then after you’d cracked that bunch it wasn’t too clever to go around as a Jeebie any more, so Webster traded his bike for a scooter. A while after that he left town.’

  ‘But his people still live here?’ Gently said.

  ‘Well, in the district,’ Metfield said. ‘His father, Jack Webster, got promotion, and that meant him shifting out to Sanford. He’s a Forestry man.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Forestry,’ Metfield said. ‘Assistant District Conservator. That’s well up the ladder. So now he’s living at the Forestry Centre, at Sanford.’

  Gently gazed at the local man for an instant, then he grabbed the case file from Metfield’s tray. He slipped out the Trail pamphlet and spread it open to reveal the last page of the text.

  ‘Look!’

  He jabbed a commanding forefinger. Metfield leaned across and goggled. Where the text ended, at the foot of the page, ran a minute superscription:

  ‘L62/2271 /JW’

  Metfield swallowed his tongue twice. ‘This . . . are you saying Jack Webster wrote it?’

  ‘Wrote it – discussed it – perhaps got some help with it – from a son who just happens to be a writer!’

  Metfield’s tongue went through it again. ‘I’ll get him on the phone, sir. I know Jack Webster to talk to.’

  Gently shook his head impatiently. ‘Never mind Jack Webster. Just get to work on the office door.’

  ‘The – office door?’

  ‘The office door! Which chummie had his hands on ten minutes ago.’ Gently leaned back, a smile shaping in his eyes. ‘Somehow, I’ve the feeling we’re about to win one.’

  Metfield bustled out. He returned quickly with a D.C. carrying a camera and gear. Together they puffed powder over the door in the neighbourhood of the knobs. No shortage of latents! The D.C. took the photographs and stripped instant-prints from the camera; then each of them sat down with a pair of photographs and a copy of the pamphlet dab from the file. The D.C. was the lucky one.

  ‘This looks like a match, sir.’

  The two photographs were pushed across to Gently. Metfield and his aide clustered, one at each shoulder, as Gently made the comparison with a magnifier. At the seventh point of similarity he laid down the glass.

  ‘This should be enough to go on with. Present my compliments to Mr Ivan Webster, lunching at the Sun, and ask him to step round for a further conversation.’

  ‘Just a further conversation, sir?’ the D.C. queried.

  ‘In friendlywise,’ Gently said. ‘Let him feel wanted.’

  The D.C. left. Metfield sat down heavily, and was silent for a while.

  CHAPTER TEN

  WEBSTER RETURNED ALONE.

  He came into the office carrying some cold chicken between two plates; set it down on the typist’s table, drew up a chair, and began eating, without a word. Gently said nothing; Metfield stared affrontedly. Webster gnawed at a drumstick held between his fingers; there was something savage about him. He crouched over the plate, his hair brushing it, his eyes intent. He dealt with the drumstick, then burped.

  ‘No objection, fuzz?’ he inquired cheerfully. ‘Only, like, we have to be back in town, on account of Nina has a show to do.’

  ‘No objection,’ Gently said. ‘And you’re free to leave when you wish.’

  ‘Yah?’ Webster said. ‘So what’s the curve? Why have you grabbed me away from lunch?’

  Gently gestured casually. ‘It seems I should know you.’

  Webster sank his teeth into a wing. His grey eyes stared hard at Gently. Gently sat back relaxedly in the swivelling desk chair.

  ‘Yah,’ Webster said. He chewed for a while. ‘Like you’re a slow starter,’ he said. ‘I remembered you, fuzz, but who wouldn’t? All that free promotion you get, too.’

  Gently ducked his head. ‘It makes a difference,’ he said. ‘And then again, you were one of a crowd. Yet there was something in your style that clicked. The way you talk. Perhaps the way you think.’

  Webster chewed. ‘Is that needle, fuzz?’

  Gently made a face. ‘Call it curiosity. Deeming made a deep impression on the kids who ran with him. I’m curious to know how it wears.’

  Webster tore off a strip with his teeth. ‘Like you never caught up with that cat,’ he said, chewing. ‘So he went for the touch, he kept going. But that just left you holding fresh air.’

  ‘He was a killer,’ Gently said.

  ‘Yah?’ Webster said. ‘That was the jazz the fuzz put around. But like who believed it? You were out to bust Dicky, so when you lost him, what would you say?’ He went on chewing. ‘Dicky was the greatest,’ he said. ‘Far out. You couldn’t forgive him.’

  Gently hunched. ‘He had original ideas.’

  ‘Like better than original,’ Webster said. ‘Dicky was touching all along, fuzz. You read that posthumous book of his?’

  ‘I read it,’ Gently said.

  ‘You read it,’ Webster said. ‘And like you’re as square now now as you were then. Still living along with the drag society, a hung-up square, beating heads.’ He threw the wing bones on the plate, picked up another drumstick and bit into it.

  ‘But for you, those ideas are valid,’ Gently said.

  Webster chewed. ‘They’re valid, period. Dicky’s jazz about aesthetics, about living on the borders. That’s crazy valid. Because the action’s there, fuzz, along the borders. That’s where you get the on-off kick. Like in between is the big drag, the kicks are spaced along the seams.’

  ‘Where contrasts meet.’

  Webster nodded. ‘Crazy.’

  ‘Like light and dark, sound and silence.’

  ‘Yah, now you’re getting it,’ Webster said.

  ‘Lawful and unlawful.’

  Webster chewed.

  ‘But then it went deeper,’ Gently said. ‘Like Deeming’s distrust of the intellect. His tendency to enthrone the intuition, to give it unrestricted control. That’s a form of Zen with the stopper off. It becomes dangerous when taught to the young and undisciplined. And if you add to it an aesthetic philosophy based on ecstasy, then a creed of violence is the probable result.’

  Webster took a fresh bite, chewed, swallowed. ‘Only Dicky didn’t go for violence,’ he said. ‘He kept it cool, you remember? Cool, cool. That was the message.’

  Gently nodded. ‘Yes, I remember. Deeming thought his discipline was equal to the strain. But unhappily it wasn’t, and under pressure he resorted to violence as soon as the next man – sooner perhaps, because he had trained himself to act without intellection. That was Deeming’s creed in action: killing Lister didn’t break the rules. Which is why I’m curious to know how the creed is wearing, thirteen years after Deeming’s death.’

  �
��Yah,’ Webster said, ‘yah.’ He threw down the drumstick and licked his fingers. He looked round the table, took a sheet of typing paper, polished his fingers, then aimed the ball at the waste-can. ‘You know something, fuzz?’

  ‘Tell me,’ Gently said.

  ‘You’re not so smart as Dicky,’ Webster said. ‘Dicky could have wound me round his little finger, which is something you’re never going to do. Not that Dicky ever did. Dicky gave it to us straight. I got the message from the guru, fuzz. And you, you’re like seeing it all from the outside, dressing it up in the square jazz. So how would you know? What’s with us discussing it? Like I’ll be on my way back to town.’

  ‘You can go,’ Gently said.

  ‘Oh sure, sure.’ Webster pushed back his hair and stared at Gently. His narrow features had a gaunt look, ended in a lank jaw, a bony chin. He licked his lips and smacked them, but made no move to rise.

  ‘So you worked with Stoll for four years,’ Gently said slowly.

  ‘Yah, Stoll,’ Webster said. ‘Four years.’

  ‘You knew him socially.’

  Webster picked at his teeth. ‘Yah. If you can call it that.’

  ‘You spent evenings at his flat?’

  ‘Like working evenings. Knocking the rough out of the script. Sometimes he had cast there, and odd cats. It could get to be like a party.’

  ‘Then you’d go on location with him?’

  ‘Right. Only nobody would call that a party.’

  ‘And sometimes he invited you to the Lodge.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Webster said. ‘Just sometimes.’

  ‘So you probably knew him better than most.’

  ‘Why not?’ Webster drew a can of beer from the pocket of his sheepskin; he tore off the flap and tossed it at the waste-can, then sucked a mouthful of beer. Gently waited.

  ‘Why not,’ Webster repeated. ‘Yah, I’ll buy it. I knew Adrian better than most. Like I said, we had a kind of relation, or as near as he’d let you get to one.’

  ‘Was he queer?’

  Webster’s eyes flickered. ‘That’s a lovely curve to throw,’ he said softly. ‘Man, wouldn’t that tie in with Oscar, and, like, his regular boyfriend, Nigel? Because queers do tend to flip and freak – yah, that Nigel is a quiet cat. I could see him tailing off after Adrian with some hose and a bottle of gas. It’s a nice pitch.’ He laughed.