Gently in Trees

by Alan Hunter

  ‘Was Stoll queer?’ Gently said.

  Webster sucked beer. ‘That’s the hang-up,’ he said. ‘I never did see any signs of it.’ He laughed again. ‘Even straight, you wouldn’t call Adrian a compulsive sexer. And he had it around, lots of dollies who would have laid him from now till breakfast. Like Adrian was old-fashioned, a one-at-a-timer – monogamy, didn’t they use to call it? It went out a way back. Like he was the last of the big oncers.’

  ‘You’re saying that Stoll was not promiscuous.’

  ‘Yah, if you want it in yesterday’s jazz.’

  ‘He attached himself exclusively to one woman.’

  ‘Man, you love a square mouthful.’

  ‘And currently that woman was Miss Walling.’

  Webster stared at Gently across the beer-can. ‘Yah, all right. He was hung on Nina. Nobody’s going to quarrel with that.’

  ‘For example, his old-fashioned attitude didn’t bother you?’

  Webster sucked more beer. ‘Yah. I’ll buy it.’

  ‘It didn’t bother you that Stoll was rich, influential in show business, and likely to offer Miss Walling marriage?’

  Webster sucked beer quickly. ‘Like why should it?’ he said. ‘Nina wasn’t going to jump into a deal like that. Marriage is kaput, is for the birds, we don’t make that scene any longer. So she’s relating with him, that’s real, and he’s helping her to orbit. But she’s crazy sold on her thing, she wouldn’t have cut out with an oldie like Adrian.’

  ‘You were convinced of that?’

  ‘Yah. Convinced.’

  ‘And your relations with Stoll were unaffected.’

  ‘Dead unaffected.’

  ‘I was thinking – professionally. The play for television you were engaged on?’

  Webster clutched tight on the beer-can. ‘So we had script troubles. Show me the production that never did. You going to cut confetti from that, you’ll have to bust the entire industry.’

  ‘But amounting to over fifty per cent of the script?’

  ‘Yah – fifty per cent! It does happen.’

  ‘With a director and writer who’ve worked together for four years?’

  ‘Yah – yah – it happens. Even then!’

  ‘But surely, not without a reason?’

  Webster glared at him, his mouth twisting. His fingers clenched and unclenched on the beer-can, making the thin metal creak.

  ‘Are you saying Adrian was cutting me down, fuzz?’

  ‘I was waiting to hear your comment.’

  ‘Like that’s what you’re saying! On account of maybe I’ve ridden along with him till now.’

  Gently shrugged. ‘And you haven’t?’

  ‘No! Not so as he could cut me down. I’ve sold stuff here, there and all over, as well as going along with Adrian.’

  ‘Then the failure of his patronage was of no consequence.’

  ‘Right! I can earn my bread any day.’

  ‘His influence could not have affected that.’

  ‘His influence –!’ Webster slammed the beer-can at the floor. He crouched towards Gently, eyes ferocious. ‘You bastard,’ he said. ‘You’re trying to fix me. Like you don’t give a fart who did it for real, as long as you finish up with me.’

  ‘Calm down,’ Gently said. ‘Nobody has accused you.’

  ‘Yah?’ Webster said. ‘Then why the needle? You love me so much because of Dicky, you’ll fix me up if it takes a year.’

  Gently shook his head. ‘There’ll be no fixing.’

  ‘Because you hate me,’ Webster said. ‘Like just one look you took at me. And Dicky and all – this is the pay-off.’

  ‘I’m sorry you think so,’ Gently said. ‘I asked you back merely for information.’

  ‘Yah, and I’ll be buying that,’ Webster said. ‘The lovely fuzz with their innocent natures.’

  Gently shrugged. ‘You don’t have to stay. You’re free to walk out through that door.’

  Webster laughed fiercely in his face. But still he made no move to rise.

  Instead, he reached for the dribbling beer-can, and took a long, final swig at it. Then, briefly, he held out the beer-can in front of him, as though to demonstrate his hand wasn’t trembling. He tossed it to Metfield – whose hand was trembling – and took out a cigarette-case. He fitted a cigarette in the amber holder and struck a light on the office table. He flicked the spent match towards Gently.

  ‘The fuzz was being clever,’ he said. ‘Clever fuzz. The fuzz was, like, making Ivan lose his cool.’ He sent a stream of smoke after the match. ‘And what did it buy the fuzz?’ he said. ‘Nothing it bought them, just nothing. Because like there was nothing to buy. You grab me, fuzz?’

  Gently was silent.

  ‘Nothing to buy,’ Webster said. ‘Ivan was far away in Battersea when someone was turning on the gas. Which is fact, fuzz, hard fact, and like all your needling won’t change it. So you can hate my guts sideways.’ He hissed more smoke towards Gently.

  ‘Tell me about Friday,’ Gently said.

  Webster stared bleakly. ‘What about Friday?’

  ‘Just give me a rundown. All that happened on that day and evening.’

  Webster breathed smoke through his nose. ‘You’re getting comic, fuzz,’ he said. ‘There wasn’t anything happened Friday, it was just holding Thursday away from Saturday.’

  ‘You worked that day?’

  ‘Oh great, I worked.’

  ‘With Mr Stoll?’

  ‘Like who else? I called in at TV Centre with some rewrite Adrian’d asked for. So then Adrian mulls it over and we make adjustments here and there, and then we try it out on set, and fiddle around a bit more. Then I retire to put it together while Adrian gets on with the rehearsal.’

  ‘That was in the morning?’

  ‘Yah, the morning. After lunch I’ve nothing to do. Adrian is hung up with cameras and lighting, which maybe is going on all afternoon. So I fetched the car and blew, like just to get a change of scene, and came back around four, when Adrian was into the script again.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  Webster mouthed a smoke ring. ‘Like I knocked off a couple of banks.’ He drew fresh smoke. ‘To Nina’s pad. You giving a guess what happened there?’

  ‘I’m willing to try,’ Gently said. ‘On Friday Miss Walling heard of her father’s difficulties. It was a critical and interesting situation. She would certainly wish to discuss it.’

  ‘Critical and interesting,’ Webster said. ‘Yah, that’s your loveliest jazz yet. And you’re so right, she wanted to discuss it, weigh up where it left her with Adrian. That was the interesting bit, you know? The critical bit belonged to Oscar. Oscar I didn’t see, by the way. Like he was out trying to raise some dough.’

  ‘So the matter was discussed between you?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Wouldn’t that tend to leave you in a dilemma?’

  ‘Yah?’ Webster said. ‘What dilemma? I wasn’t owing Adrian fifty grand.’

  ‘This was the dilemma,’ Gently said. ‘You had either to interfere, or lose Nina. Because clearly the solution to her father’s problems was lying in Miss Walling’s hands. She could consent to marry Mr Stoll if in return he agreed to reprieve her father, and in those circumstances Mr Stoll would certainly have insisted that she ended her liaison with you. Also, in that event, your professional prospects would probably be prejudiced. So this was the dilemma which faced you on the Friday afternoon.’

  Webster was silent for a spell, the cigarette trailing smoke by his face. His hard eyes were staring at the desk, never shifting from the one point. He sat still and a little crouched, with a gleam of sweat on his naked chest. At last he made a flicking motion with the cigarette.

  ‘Yah, all right,’ he said. ‘I’ll buy it. Like I never tagged the fuzz as stupid, and you’ve given me reasons that stand up. Yah, sure, that was the size of it, Nina was set for a play at Adrian. And I would have been out, and Adrian might have busted me, because, like, it was Nina who was h
olding me in. I wasn’t Adrian’s lover-boy, you know? He was taking it out of me through the script. And, like, once I was out of the package deal, he could have bust me with a lot of people. So I’m buying it, fuzz, going along with you. Only where can you take it from there?’

  ‘You returned to the studios at four p.m.?’

  Webster nodded. ‘About then.’

  ‘Mr Stoll had work waiting for you?’

  ‘Yah – sort of, like rehearsing a couple of scenes. I’m listening, hearing the words, figuring cuts and rewrite. Then afterwards there’s a conference, and that’s it for the day.’

  ‘But you did have conversation with Mr Stoll?’

  Webster flicked the cigarette. ‘That follows.’

  ‘You would, perhaps, accompany him to the canteen, and sit for a while over refreshment.’

  ‘Yah, it’s been known,’ Webster said.

  ‘Talking of other things beside the script. Just casual, ordinary matters. Like where Mr Stoll could photograph badgers.’

  The cigarette rose, and stayed still. ‘Very interesting, fuzz,’ Webster said. ‘Wouldn’t that be just the thing to chat Adrian with, and him so crazy about filming wildlife.’

  ‘I think it would,’ Gently said. ‘I think it would have interested Mr Stoll deeply. I think he would have been eager to know in exact detail where he should go to film these animals. And that would call for information from a local person, and one with access to special sources. Such as an officer in the Forestry. Or the relative of such a man.’

  Webster took some quick, deliberate puffs.

  ‘Hand me your ballpen,’ Gently said.

  ‘Yah?’ Webster said. ‘Like why should I?’

  ‘Because I’m asking you for it,’ Gently said.

  Webster hesitated, then plucked a pen from his pocket and leaned forward to shale it across the desk. He watched malevolently as Gently popped it and stroked red lines across a pad.

  ‘Like it matches something, fuzz?’

  ‘Yes,’ Gently said. ‘It matches something.’

  Webster leered. ‘So now isn’t it too bad they sell those things a dime a dozen?’

  Gently opened the file and took out the Trail pamphlet. He laid it on the desk with the map uppermost. He drew a stroke with the ballpen beside the marking on the map. It matched the marking in colour and width of line. Gently looked at Webster.

  ‘Do you recognize this pamphlet?’

  Webster eased back. ‘Like you think I ought to?’

  ‘I’m asking you a simple question,’ Gently said. ‘I would like you to answer it – yes or no.’

  Webster stared at Gently, at the pamphlet. Smoke rose from the cigarette without a waver. Nothing moved in the gaunt face except the calculating grey eyes.

  ‘Yah,’ Webster said. ‘Nice question, fuzz. Because that pen proves, like, nothing. And that’s what I’m supposed to be thinking, isn’t it, that not a thing can the fuzz prove.’ He gave a nervous laugh. ‘Yet somehow I’m feeling that the fuzz have got a trap here. Like I just take another step forward and I shall be dropped on from a great height. So this one I don’t buy, fuzz. Yah, I recognize that pamphlet. Why wouldn’t I? It was me who wrote it, after my old man roughed it out.’ Suddenly, violently, he knocked out the cigarette-butt, and ground it savagely beneath his foot.

  ‘You recognize this particular copy?’ Gently said.

  ‘Yah, yah, I recognize it,’ Webster said. ‘Like I’ve got a bunch of them at the flat which my old man sent me when they came from the printers. So I gave one to Adrian, why not? This was the scene he lived next door to. And wouldn’t he just spot the bit about badgers, and like ask for all the jazz I could give him?’

  ‘Is that what you’re saying – that he asked for information?’

  Webster nodded fast. ‘That’s what I’m saying. He took one look at the badger bit and then he was all over me with questions.’

  Gently stared. ‘When?’ he said.

  ‘Yah, that’s the next question,’ Webster said. He raked at the sweat beading on his chest. ‘Like the Monday,’ he said. ‘Maybe Tuesday.’

  ‘Friday,’ Gently said.

  ‘I’m settling for Tuesday.’

  ‘Friday.’

  Webster’s eyes were hating him. ‘So even if it’s, like, Friday, which I don’t admit, what’s the beef, when it was all so innocent?’

  ‘Friday,’ Gently said. ‘And it wasn’t innocent. You picked up that pamphlet after leaving Nina Walling. You drove to your flat and collected it so you could palm it off on Stoll that day.’

  Webster’s eyes were murder. ‘You have to prove that, fuzz.’

  Gently nodded. ‘Yes, I think we shall prove it. We’ll find witnesses who saw your car at the flat at that time, who saw and perhaps heard you discussing the pamphlet with Stoll.’

  ‘And like that proves it was something not innocent?’

  ‘When set in this context,’ Gently said. ‘At that time you wouldn’t have been going out of your way to perform an act of friendship for Mr Stoll.’

  Webster scrubbed violently at his chest. ‘You got it all tied up, fuzz, haven’t you?’ he said. ‘It was me who sent Adrian out after badgers, so it was me who followed up with a bottle of gas.’

  ‘You tell me,’ Gently said.

  ‘Yah, yah, I’ll tell you,’ Webster said. ‘And I’ll tell you you’ll have to do a rewrite job, because this is one script that will never get shot.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ Gently said.

  ‘Yah, you better,’ Webster said. ‘Because, like, one, I didn’t pick up that pamphlet, I already had it in my briefcase. And, like, two, I was never out of London any time, Saturday or Sunday. So it all falls down, fuzz. You’ve just got nowhere. I didn’t plan it and I didn’t do it. So you better kick it around some more, fuzz, and figure how you’ll get over that.’

  Gently shrugged. ‘Your alibi doesn’t cover you.’

  ‘You think?’ There was triumph in Webster’s leer.

  ‘It leaves a gap between midnight and six a.m. You had plenty of time to kill Stoll.’

  ‘And that’s just where you’ve boobed, fuzz.’ Webster leaned back, caressing his chest with languid fingers. His lips were grinning. ‘You hung too much on it. And like now it’s going to blow up in your face.’

  ‘You would like to expand on your previous statement?’

  ‘Yah,’ Webster said. ‘I would like to expand on it. I wish to tell the fuzz how I was woken by a phone call at like, two-thirty on Sunday morning.’

  ‘Go on,’ Gently said.

  ‘My pleasure,’ Webster said. ‘It was a personal call from my agent in Los Angeles – like where it was sometime in the afternoon – with some hopeful news of U.S. sales. Now can you beat that?’

  ‘Name,’ Gently said.

  ‘Samuel Rosenberg,’ Webster said. ‘One-one-oh-five Tijuana Boulevard. You’ll have to get the phone number from a directory.’

  Gently noted down the name. ‘We shall certainly check that.’

  ‘But backwards and forwards,’ Webster said. ‘Because like it’s fireproof, fuzz, and that’s what you’ll find. It takes all the guessing out of the game.’ He leaned his head on one side. ‘Square one,’ he said. ‘It didn’t come off because it couldn’t. Which leaves us with what I was telling you, fuzz. Keep your beady eye on Lawrence Turner.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gently said. ‘I heard you before.’

  ‘Now hear me again,’ Webster said. ‘That cat runs a whole lot deeper than you think, and he didn’t get his jazz from Dicky Deeming. He’s a cat who flips, a freaky cat, a cat who can jump either side of the wall. But he’s not so bright, so like you can trip him, a fuzz like you with all the curves.’

  ‘Any other suggestions?’ Gently said.

  Webster stropped his nails on his chest. Then he shook his head. ‘You’ll get there,’ he said. ‘You may be square, but you’ll surely make it.’

  The door was tapped apologetically: a constable entered, rather flustere
d.

  ‘Yes?’ Gently said.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, sir. But there’s a lady in reception asking for this gentleman.’

  ‘Nina,’ Webster said. ‘Like she’s due back in town.’ His eyes connected with Gently’s mockingly. ‘Is that door still open, fuzz,’ he said. ‘Or like shall I send out for a habeas corpus?’

  ‘That door is still open,’ Gently said.

  ‘Yah,’ Webster said. ‘I must have made a point.’ He rose, and stood for a moment flapping his torso with the wings of the sheepskin. ‘You know, Dicky liked you, fuzz,’ he said. ‘Which was kind of wild, the way you were pushing him. Me, I don’t have Dicky’s nice nature, I like to push back when I get pushed. But just maybe I could relate with you too, give or take an incarnation. Isn’t that fun?’

  Gently said nothing.

  ‘Yah, yah,’ Webster said. ‘Just maybe.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE DOOR CLOSED: Metfield jumped up immediately.

  ‘Sir! Do you think we’re doing the right thing?’

  Gently folded his hands behind his head, leaned back, and grinned at the local man.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But that chummie’s our man, sir! I could feel it in my guts when you were turning him over. He was out here, he did the job. That alibi of his just must be a fake.’

  Gently sighed. ‘Not a fake,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid our friend is too intelligent for that. We’re going to find that his phone call is depressingly genuine, at some expense to the British tax-payer.’

  ‘But it could have been set up with the agent, sir, and somebody else have taken the call.’

  ‘That’s what we’ll be spending the money checking,’ Gently said. ‘But my guess is that Rosenberg is as pure as the lilies.’ He shook his head. ‘No. Webster was too confident. He had Rosenberg as his ace in the hole. He knew we must have something when we called him back here, so he kept his shirt-tail flying till he found out what. And now he knows, and now we know: Webster has a copper-bottomed alibi. Also, I looked round his car, which hasn’t been washed in the last month.’