“I wouldn’t be sur-wondered.”
This was by a wide margin Ormerod’s favorite verbal joke, and one that he aired at some point during most conversations with him.
“I want to know everything—everything that happens up here in the next week or two.”
Joe nodded his promise and then hastened to pass on something that he already knew. “I suppose you know that that lot are coming up here again.”
“No, I didn’t. What lot?”
“That television lot. They’re filming another film.”
And this was news to Mosley.
“Aye. End of summer. Going to be about a dragon. Up in Kestrel Clough. All fixed up with Isaac Oldham, because Longden wouldn’t have them on his premises again. They’ve booked up every room in the Plough. Every bed and breakfast that’s to be had in Hadley.”
“Oh, aye?”
“Up Kestrel Clough. Night time. Making a new film. Been to see Isaac Oldham to make arrangements for the dragon. Going to be a real dragon. Isaac Oldham’s going to have to feed it.”
There ought to be some grist for Tom Appleyard and Brad Oldroyd in those goings-on.
“Same people, you say, Joe?”
“Aye. And some say it was one of them that Lottie Pearson went off with. So we’re waiting to see.”
He was waiting to see. Hadley Dale was waiting to see. A dragon up Kestrel Clough. Ellerman Tovey interviewing them while Tom Grimshaw and the ACC sat by their sets. A man on the production team who still might have Lottie Pearson in tow.
Joe Ormerod wiped up briny cockle-juice with a corner of crust.
“There’s one more thing while I’m here, Joe. What’s the feeling about Hunter?”
“Folks don’t think it’s right,” Ormerod said.
An answer that he seemed to think was self-explanatory. Mosley gave him time to expand.
“What do they think’s not right, Joe? Whose side is the village on?”
“Hunter’s,” Joe said. “Shouldn’t have hit the kid like he did, but hasn’t done him any lasting harm. But he shouldn’t have to be fighting to get his own lad back. Well, I ask you—should he?”
“What if he’s going to whale the daylight out of him again?”
“He won’t,” Joe said with certainty. “Hunter’s had a shake-up. He’s off the ale.”
The case was still on remand. Hunter was out on bail. It was coming up for disposal in a week or two, after social and medical reports. The opinion of Hadley Dale was interesting. People made mistakes from time to time, up in the cloughs and fells, but if they had reached the stage of forgiving Hunter, they must have their reasons for it.
“He’s not set foot in the pub since,” Joe said.
“He’s tried that before in his time. It’s never lasted all that long.”
“If they take the kid off him, he’ll go out of his mind.”
“And what about the kid’s mind?”
“I think, personally, meself,” Joe said, “they ought to give him his chance. Hunter’s missus has bought herself a new coat with one week’s beer savings.”
“Nothing will convince me that the man is not a stark, staring lunatic.”
Chief Inspector Marsters had come back to the ACC and Tom Grimshaw with his carefully considered findings about Mosley’s activities. The experience seemed to have brought him a stage nearer to his point of apopletic no-return. The purplish mesh above his cheek-bones was now positively incandescent and his temporal veins were knotted and throbbing. Any statement by Marsters on Mosley was certain to be vicious. But he rarely had the luxury of being commissioned to make one. And it was animal savagery that these two wanted to hear: especially since the hard work that Grimshaw had had to put in on the phone to Matthew Longden.
“Mind you, he’s not the only one in this town who seems to be going round the bend. You remember he wanted to bring charges against Councillor Bootherstone and Mrs. Roffey?”
“We do. If you recall, that was the reason why we asked you to—”
“Anyone would think to hear them talk that Mosley was doing them a favour. You’d think that some extract of violets was puffing out of Mosley’s arse. Mrs. Roffey is even trying to work out that he has chances of promotion.”
“Yes,” said ACC said. “We are aware that in some men’s vision, Mosley’s eyes have a bluish tinge just now.”
“He seems to have ingratiated himself with these people. If you ask me, he has used these ridiculous charges for some purpose of his own.”
“We have gathered that. What we wanted to know—”
But Marsters could only say what was filling his own head.
“It seems that he went along to each of them in turn, homburg in hand, apologizing profusely and saying that some common informer, whom he refused to name, had been laying informations against them. About captive balloons, flag-days, hares in the deep freeze. They would understand, wouldn’t they, that he only had his duty to do.” Marsters went into a mincing tone that was totally unjust either to Mosley or any of the principals. “They would understand that he could not stop the papers going forward. But they could rest assured that nothing would come of any of these ridiculous charges. They could trust Mosley to handle them discreetly behind the scenes. He would see to it personally that they all went into the shredder.”
“Mosley would see to that?”
“So that’s why they think the world of him, those three. If you ask me, Mosley’s up to something.”
“If you remember,” the ACC said, “so do we. We asked you to find out what. And while you’re here, there’s another thing—”
There seemed to be a lot of the bile brimming over in top offices this morning. Marsters had not expected that any of it would be coming his way.
“It’s now thirteen weeks since we had the first complaint about quick-snatch housebreakings on your patch. Two or three every week, regular. And we seem to have missed the echo of cell-doors slamming. Digito extracto. Marsters. Or we shall have to pass the case-file on to Mosley.”
Chapter Eleven
Mosley crossed the road from Joe Ormerod’s to Sarah Pearson’s. Sarah Pearson had settled down to her Saturday evening’s indulgence. She had washed up her tea-things, and they were standing on her scrubbed but rotting wooden draining-board and she was sitting in a fireside chair listening to a programme of radio comedy—or such of it as was not obscured by static. A modest glass of grocer’s port stood on a stool within easy reach of her hand. She waved Mosley to her other chair.
“What was he after?” Mosley asked her.
“What was who after?”
“Your Jack.”
“Nay. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Mosley let his eyes scan Sarah Pearson’s scanty possessions. She had been sly. If she had offered her son tea, she had put his cup and saucer away, and there was only crockery for one at the side of the sink. But someone had brought her a Bradcaster midday paper which she had not thrown away, no doubt promising herself a rare hour of local title-tattle. And at the back of her fire he spied a cigarette-end that had so far escaped flame and embers: Sarah Pearson did not smoke.
Mosley let her see where his eyes were travelling, and she did not shirk the obvious conclusions. She had a sharper brain than Joe Ormerod, and knew when a battle was lost in advance.
“Is it a crime nowadays, then, for a mother to mash tea for her son?”
“Far from it,” Mosley said. “I’m always glad to see the end of any civil war.”
“Oh, aye?”
The commonest two syllables in the Dale, into which intonation could inject a rich variety of meanings. In this instance, Sarah Pearson was making a statement of her irreparable disbelief.
“I knew he’d come back,” Mosley said. “Oh, it’s the tale of the Dale that the pair of you saw him off. But he wouldn’t want his poor old Mum to be fending for herself, now, would he?”
“You’re a clever bugger,” she said.
“And so a
re you. Clever enough to see what’s going to come next.”
“Oh, aye?”
Now the meaning was that she rejected this sort of soft-soap talk—but that she wanted to know where he was leading her.
“Coming back to live with you, is he?”
“That’s as may be.”
“He couldn’t stand living with his wife, because she saw right through him, and couldn’t keep her tongue quiet for a minute about what she saw. You know how to get a message to him?”
“Why should I want to do that?”
“So that you can pass him a message from me.”
“Oh, aye?”
Meaning that he could talk as much as he liked and she would hear the message first, before she decided whether to pass it or not.
“Tell him there’s no future in trying to get money out of Matthew Longden. He may find himself in bigger trouble than he’s ever struck yet.”
She looked as if she did not believe this. To admit that she did would come close to admitting that she knew what her son was scheming.
“Tell him we know where Lottie’s belongings were laid to rest.”
“You think you kept that dark? Every silly bugger in the village knows about that.”
The studio audience laughed at some gag of the radio comics. Mosley went over and switched off the set. Neither of them was listening to the programme, but both of them knew that his action was an unpardonable liberty to take in a stranger’s house.
“Listen, Sarah—”
And that was a greater liberty still. The use of Christian names in the Dale was governed by a code that bristled with significance.
“Tell him I want to know where he buried Betty Longden’s tackle. And if I happen to find out before he tells me, I shall not be on his side.”
Sarah Pearson held her eyes fixed on Mosley’s face. To agree to what he was asking might be tantamount to all manner of admissions. But she had known Mosley, in one context or another, for many years.
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
The next day was Sunday, and Joe Ormerod rang Mosley halfway through the morning. “You wanted to know everything that happened up here. Anything unusual, you said.”
“That’s right, Joe.”
“Sarah Pearson was out in her Sunday best before eight this morning. Round at Sam Parkinson’s garage, wanting to know what he’d ask to run her into Bradcaster. I don’t know how much she paid him. She has a few quid put by, you know. But as soon as he’d had his breakfast, he drove her out in that big black Austin that he uses for funerals.”
In the course of the next few days, Marsters made frequent short reports on Mosley’s activities.
He seemed to be spending an inordinate ration of his time on the case of that battered boy. Surely, as far as the CID was concerned, all the paper-work on that should have been finished weeks ago? It was for the Halo Squad now, the welfare and country care people, to be putting their spanners in the wheels of justice. Did Mosley think he was being paid to do their work for them?
Then he had spent an hour one morning in Raven’s furniture shop, talking to Ernest Weatherhead in the back office between customers. Why Ernest Weatherhead? Weatherhead could not possibly be an informant on anything that interested Mosley. Weatherhead did not stir out of the inside shadows of the shop for long enough to have any information about anything.
Marsters felt a heightened glow of excitement. A few more reports like this, and Mosley would be booked for a medical board. They’d find clear evidence of brain deterioration.
Then the mystery deepened. Mosley applied for two days of his annual leave, tacked them on to a rest day and disappeared into the unknown. Marsters was unable to account for him to the D-S and the ACC. But on his return, Mosley picked up his phone and rang Chief Inspector Marsters in the headquarters office.
“Just to apologize. You must have been wondering where I’ve been.”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“I wouldn’t like you to think I’ve been trying to give you the slip.”
“I don’t know what the blazes you’re talking about.”
“I know my movements interest you. I’ve only been to Bradcaster. Stayed at one of the smaller commercials. I thought I’d better let you know that I’m back.”
He put down the phone after hearing what appeared to be a visceral implosion. Then he went for a quiet walk in the Jubilee Park, leaned on the balustrade of the bridge and looked down at the ducks. There was a superfluity of drakes in this pond, which led to random and colourful activity. A background of random activity somehow always helped Mosley to reflect.
He had spent a busy time in Bradcaster. He was not a big city man, and was always liable to misjudge distances when he was in one. He rarely thought it necessary to take to public transport and consequently did a great deal of trudging about long streets.
If Matthrew Longden had been able to find what he wanted in the yellow pages, then so could Mosley. He argued that Longden would never have used the only private eye in Bradburn. For one thing he was too well known, and, for another, so was his inefficiency. But he wouldn’t have gone further afield than Bradcaster: local flavour was too important. Mosley was lucky to find an issue of the directory for the year in which Betty Longden had gone, so he was able to save the waste of time spent on firms that had opened since. He arrived at a short list of six, of whom two had gone out of business and one had died. The first in whose office he actually found himself was a retired detective-sergeant from the Sheffield force, a man called Colley, who had a heavy cold—and no inhibitions whatever about discussing a previous client’s business. He seemed conversation-starved, and took great pleasure in talking to a serving policeman. Perhaps he had his eye on reciprocal favours for the future.
It took him a little time, however, to remember Longden. Then he had recourse to a bulging filing system, which he had obviously never weeded since he had opened his bureau. He cursed as he crushed his knuckles getting them in and out of the tightly concertinaed folders, and in the end it was mostly from human rather than paper memory that he talked.
“I remember the bugger. Bad-tempered cow-son. Wanted results in half a day, and queried the price of a cup of coffee when I’d gone without my lunch. Paid up, though: on the nail.”
Colley lit a cigarette that rasped his inflamed membranes, and had a coughing fit into a paper tissue.
“To tell you the truth, though, I ended up wondering whether he was bloody interested. I made a preliminary report to him by telephone, which was what he had asked me for. But he cut me off short. I don’t think he even listened to what I was trying to tell him. He told me I was taken off the case before he’d heard half of what he’d asked me to find out. I couldn’t care less. There wasn’t much in it for me, and it wasn’t interesting. Just one of those cases where the woman had obviously beetled off because she couldn’t stand him a minute longer. And if the way he treated her was anything like the way he treated me, I don’t know how she’d stuck him as long as she did. Of course, I know he was upset. He’s not the only one by a long chalk I’ve seen in that condition. They always seem to blame the next bugger they meet for all that’s happened to them.”
Colley coughed again and took a pastille from a tin on his desk.
“And what did you find out that he wouldn’t let you tell him?” Mosley asked.
“Well, I’d traced her to Bradcaster railway station and on to the London express. But I honestly don’t think he heard me tell him that. He started bellyaching about paying through the nose for the obvious before I’d finished what I was saying.”
“The London express?”
“Oh, aye. I watched her get aboard with my own eyes. And she’d queued at the office for a reservation.”
“You’re sure you were following the right woman?”
Colley laughed. “I can see you’re a man of some experience. He’d lent me a photograph. He was so keen to get it back that I could picture him drooling o
ver it for the rest of his days. I snapped a copy of it, because I’d a partner in those days who shared the watching with me. I dare say I’ve still got it.”
He plunged his fingers again in amongst the tightly wedged folders, and came out with a snapshot that he passed to Mosley. Mosley did not know the woman in a summer print frock of the 1950s who had been caught by a beach photographer on the promenade at Morecambe.
It was certainly not Betty Longden.
Mosley’s next call was on Paterson, Rudge & Stevenson, a one-man firm run by a man called Watts, whose qualification as a private investigator was a failed law degree. He probably picked up enough dubious work from Bradcaster solicitors to make an income. Some of his more lucrative clients might well be impressed by his public-school drawl and by his hint of cynical disregard for any professional except himself.
He staunchly refused to discuss any man’s affairs with Mosley, putting on an act of outraged etiquette at any such monstrous suggestion. Mosley sat for a moment silent, almost as if he had not heard any of this; or, at least, as if he were about to produce some surprise in the way of a bargaining counter. His trousers were baggy at the knees, and his shoes, never very highly buffed, were whitened by the dust of the Bradcaster pavements. Watts looked as if he were measured for a new suit every two weeks or so, and threw all his neckties away after a single wearing.
Then Mosley stood up, conveyed a non-verbal apology and made his way through the outer office. There had been a time somewhere in the middle of his life when he had learned what kind of encounter not to waste time and effort on.
And so to the last of his hopes.
Houston was a man with a thick Glaswegian accent that had not responded to a working lifetime in Bradcaster. He was a busy man whose telephone frustrated continuous conversation every two minutes or so, and who seemed to have several hundred irons simultaneously in the fire, of which he was in command of the detail without having to remind himself. He was also extremely and candidly suspicious, and gave the impression of being so hard-bittenly astute that he must have spent a long career anticipating attempts to outwit him. Yet he did not dismiss Mosley out of hand. Where there were chances, Houston explored them.
Mosley by Moonlight Page 10