by Alan Hunter
‘Mrs Jillings got the breakfast,’ she said. ‘Mrs Jillings is my daily.’
‘Then did you all have breakfast together?’
She shook her head. ‘Johnny had his first. He had to be at the site at eight. He was working on the Ford Road project.’
‘Did Johnny seem much as usual?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘What I saw of him. Except perhaps he was a little short with me. But I’d been used to that, lately. He rang Betty.’
‘What about?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t listen,’ she said. ‘I thought he was arranging about the evening, you know, the jazz thing in Castlebridge. He used to go there every Tuesday.’
‘Did he usually ring her about it?’
‘I don’t remember,’ she said. ‘He used to ring Betty a lot.’
‘So then you saw him off, did you?’
‘I saw him get his bike out,’ she said. ‘I was dressing Jean in the kiddies’ bedroom. I gave him a wave but he didn’t see me. Then, well, it was much as always. I drove the kiddies to school. Mrs Jillings did the ironing while I prepared the things for lunch. Then I drove down to town, did some shopping, went to Leonard’s for coffee. It can’t be of importance. Only to me, that is.’
‘Johnny came home to lunch, did he?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘at about twenty to one.’
‘Was that his usual time for lunch?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘They leave off at twelve-thirty.’
‘Was there anything you noticed at lunch?’
‘He was quiet,’ she said. ‘He had nothing to say. And usually he read the lunchtime paper. I thought he was brooding about Betty. I tried to talk to him about it. I could have helped him, I know. I’d give anything now.’ She stopped. ‘He snapped at me,’ she said.
‘What made you think he was brooding over Betty?’
She paused. ‘Woman’s intuition,’ she said. ‘But no, that’s not quite true, really. I’d seen him worrying over her before. I watched him the more because he’d gone so far from me. I sometimes knew what he was thinking. Poor Johnny. Poor Johnny. But all the time I was with him really.’
‘So you’d begun to lose him,’ Gently said, ‘when you lost your husband.’
She nodded silently. Her hand lifted and fell again in her lap.
‘It’s been all one tragedy.’
‘All one,’ she said.
‘These kids,’ Setters said. He wrung his hands, making the joints crack.
‘Was there anything else about lunch?’ Gently asked.
She was on the point of shaking her head. She changed her mind. ‘One thing,’ she said, ‘since you want to know every detail. He went to his room when he came in. Before he washed or did anything. I thought perhaps he’d gone to fetch something, but he was carrying nothing when he came out.’
‘Did he take something in there?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘he’d nothing with him. Or it was something very small which he carried in his pocket.’
‘Have you noticed anything in his room?’
‘No, nothing,’ she said.
‘You’ve been in there since Tuesday?’
‘Once,’ she said, ‘I went in.’
‘Let’s go on from after lunch.’
She leant her head on the wing of the chair. ‘It was one of those blank afternoons,’ she said. ‘Nothing happened much at all. After the washing-up I did some mending, Peter’s socks, Jean’s gym-slip. Then I looked at the TV, but there was nothing on that. So I pottered about in the house till it was time to fetch the kiddies. They’d had their tea and were out playing by the time Johnny got back. He was angrier if anything.’
‘Had he been angry before?’
‘With me,’ she said. ‘He’d been angry all day. And now he was angrier. We couldn’t exchange a civil word. I was bushed, I felt desperate, I couldn’t think what I was going to do about him. I’ve been miserable. It needed a man. Johnny needed a man to cope with him.’
‘Can you remember anything significant he said?’
‘It was just angriness,’ she said. ‘Picking on things, you know, making a tragedy out of nothing. The tea wasn’t ready when he wanted it, he couldn’t find a clean shirt, Mrs Jillings hadn’t pressed his tie, I got in his way in the bathroom. By the time it was over and he’d gone I was practically in tears. I put the kiddies to bed early. Jean came in for a smacking.’
‘And you put it down to his anxiety about Betty.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I suppose I did. Betty and everything she stood for.’
‘Not just Betty.’
‘Betty and the rest. It’s all one in my mind,’ she said. ‘If she’d been a decent sort of girl she wouldn’t have led him on so far.’
‘Just briefly,’ Gently said, ‘did anything happen during the evening?’
‘I played bridge,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘The Dawsons came over. I played bridge.’
In the report it said she’d been rung at a quarter to one on the Wednesday morning. Later that day she’d seen the body and identified the motorcycle and some clothes. Her doctor, Setters had said, had given her a strong sedative, but after the initial shock she had declined to use it.
A car pulled in to the driveway.
‘That’s Mother with the kiddies,’ Mrs Lister said.
‘One more question,’ Gently said, ‘then we’ll stop being a nuisance to you. What sort of cigarettes did your son smoke?’
Mrs Lister looked puzzled. ‘Guards, I think.’
‘Did he ever talk of sticks?’ Gently asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘What are sticks?’
‘Reefers,’ Gently said.
Still Mrs Lister looked puzzled.
‘Cigarettes,’ he explained, ‘with a percentage of marijuana added.’
‘Oh,’ she said. She flushed slightly. ‘That’s dope, isn’t it?’ she said.
Gently nodded. ‘That’s dope.’
‘No,’ she said quickly, ‘he wouldn’t. No.’
‘He never mentioned them at all?’
‘Never,’ she said. ‘Not Johnny.’
‘You didn’t suspect he might be smoking them? They have a strong, heady aroma.’
She hesitated. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Johnny just wouldn’t have done it.’
Gently rose. ‘Would it very much upset you if we looked through his room?’ he said.
Her flush was heightened. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘You can do that if you want to.’
She rose and led the way out into the hall and down a short passage. They passed a door behind which could be heard the voices of children in expostulation. She checked there but then continued. She opened a door at the end of the passage. It gave into a small bedroom with an enormous window that faced the trees.
‘Johnny’s room,’ she said, catching her breath. She went to the window and stood looking out.
Gently entered. He sniffed delicately. Stale cigarette smoke and newish furnishings. A bedroom suite in unpolished oak, a bedside cabinet, a table. On the table was a record player and a plastic rack stuffed with records. In the top of the cabinet there were books. There was a yellow Penguin on the Buddhist Scriptures. A glass ashtray stood on the cabinet, recently emptied but not washed. A working jacket hung over a chair. Some boots were shoved underneath.
Gently opened the door of the cabinet. It contained magazines, a camera, junk. The dressing-table drawers were crammed with clothes and in the tallboy was clean bedlinen. Setters went over the wardrobe. He had exploring fingers like a pickpocket’s. Soon he closed the door noiselessly and gave a small, negative shrug. Shoes, boots were all empty. Nothing was hidden about the bed.
‘About how long was Johnny in here at lunchtime on Tuesday?’ Gently asked.
‘Only a moment,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘He went straight in and came straight out again.’
Gently went to the doorway, stood looking round the room. He walked across to the record player, snapped the catches, lifted the lid. A rec
ord lay on the turntable. He lifted the record. Underneath, wrapped in a serviette, were five unbranded cigarettes. They were clumsily rolled in a greyish paper and made from a coarse brown tobacco. He showed them to Setters.
‘Like the others you’ve seen round here?’ he asked.
Setters nodded. He turned one of them over with his nail.
Mrs Lister came forward, stared at the five cigarettes. She was very pale.
‘And they’re reefers?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Gently said. ‘They’re reefers.’
‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘Oh God, not Johnny. It’s beyond me, I can’t believe it. There’s no meaning any longer.’ She began to laugh hysterically, the tears plunging down her cheeks.
‘I’m sorry,’ Gently said.
‘There’s no meaning,’ she repeated.
‘We’ll have to take these,’ Gently said. ‘We’ll perhaps find out who’s been pushing them.’
‘There’s no meaning,’ she went on. ‘And I’m so tired of it, so tired of it. There’s no point in it all. And I’m so tired, so tired.’
Some feet scuffled in the passage. A little boy stood in the doorway. He was six or seven, fair-haired, wearing a school blazer with a huge badge. His eyes were round. His mouth was working. His chubby hands were balled hard. He suddenly ran screaming to Mrs Lister.
‘Mummy. Mummy. Mummy. Mummy.’
He buried his face in her stomach. She held him to her with both hands.
‘Peter,’ she said. ‘Peter.’
‘Mummy, mummy,’ he wailed.
‘Peter.’
He twisted round. He stared at Gently. There was a flinching pucker in his face.
‘Go away policeman,’ he said. ‘Go away from my mummy.’
‘No, Peter,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘He’s a kind man, Peter.’
‘Go away,’ Peter said. ‘Policeman go away.’
Gently made a sign to Setters.
They took the reefers and went.
‘Progress,’ Setters said as they drove away from Chase Drive. ‘And me the dumbest screw in the force not to have looked for those sticks sooner. Do you think she really didn’t know?’
‘She didn’t know,’ Gently said. ‘She had suspicions, maybe, but she didn’t want to believe them.’
‘So he was smoking,’ Setters said. ‘That alters the picture just a bit. They were both of them smoking. Might have been high when they crashed.’
‘Yet he leaves the sticks at home,’ Gently said. ‘Why was that?’
‘Just his home supply,’ Setters said. ‘You can maybe buy them in Castlebridge.’
‘Did you find any at the crash?’ Gently asked.
‘No,’ Setters said. ‘But that proves nothing.’
‘You’d have thought they’d have had a spare one about them,’ Gently said.
Setters rubbed his cheek. ‘The girl didn’t have any at home,’ he said. ‘When the medic told us we sent round, but we found nothing there. And it’s right, she ought to have had some. She had a case in her bag. It just wouldn’t be that chummie Elton whipped those reefers, you think?’
‘You’ve met him,’ Gently said.
‘Yeah,’ Setters said slowly. ‘Pass back. He isn’t the type. He’s next to human. He wouldn’t have gone through her bag.’
‘I’ll want to talk to her,’ Gently said. ‘Is there a chance of me doing it?’
‘I’ll ring the blood-house,’ Setters said. ‘But she hasn’t been conscious again since.’
They parked at H.Q. and went through to Setters’ office. He rang the hospital. Betty Turner was still in a coma. Gently had spread out the reefers and the serviette on a sheet of paper on Setter’s desk. He sat looking at them while Setters phoned, pushing them about with the tip of a pen-holder.
Setters hung up.
‘You’ll have heard,’ he said.
Gently shrugged, put down the pen-holder.
‘What do we know about them?’ Setters asked.
‘They’re a common make,’ Gently said. ‘We’ve picked up scores of this type in Soho and points west. They’ve been a headache for some time. You’d better dust them and send them to Narcotics.’
Setters nodded. ‘And the serviette?’
‘Dust that too,’ Gently said. ‘Then put a man on tracing its origin. He can start on the cafes in the Ford Road area.’
‘Yes,’ Setters said. ‘That’s probably where Lister got those sticks on the Tuesday morning. He wasn’t late home so it’d be in the tea-break, and he wouldn’t go far from the site for that.’
‘One other thing,’ Gently said. ‘Suppose you wanted to pull a jeebie. Where’s the most likely place to lay hands on one?’
Setters thought about it. ‘Try the First and Last cafe,’ he said. ‘You’ll find it just out of town on the Norwich Road.’
‘Is it cool, man?’ Gently asked.
‘Bloody arctic,’ said Setters.
‘Like I may make the scene after a meal,’ Gently said.
CHAPTER FOUR
At the sun Gently ordered a high tea and while he ate it read the evening paper. Two reporters had been waiting at H.Q. when he first arrived there and after the conference he had given them a short non-committal statement. He had been photographed. The photograph appeared on the front page. It showed him stooping to enter the Rover, on the whole a flattering shot. It was recognizable also. His waitress had recognized it. She now addressed him as Mr Gently and had a conversation about him with another waitress. The manager, who’d known about him all along, nodded to him with superior deference.
Setters looked in again after tea with the results of the print-taking, but the prints on the reefers had been few and partial and those on the serviette were Lister’s. He’d sent out Ralphs with the serviette and expected a report from him during the evening. Ralphs had been on the case from the beginning: he was keen not to be dropped now.
‘Will you want me with you this evening?’ Setters had asked.
Gently had grinned. ‘Am I likely to need you?’
‘Not in this town you shouldn’t,’ Setters had replied. ‘But you might not be popular where you are going.’
He’d borrowed the paper and gone out looking at it. But only his arm had shown in the picture.
At half-past seven Gently left, after studying a plan of Latchford which hung in the hotel hall. He drove up the High Street, turned right at the top, drove some distance through a residential street. The street ended abruptly. There was open country beyond it. The lights were cut off quite sharply and beyond them was blackness. A little further right was a pull-up backed by a low, dim-lit building, and on the building was a red neon sign which read: First And Last. He drove in and parked between a truck and a small van. Next to the van, parked in a square, were six or seven motorcycles. When he got out from the car he could hear canned jazz music, somebody beating out the rhythm, a girl’s voice raised in a squeal. He went over and through the door. Opposite the door was an espresso bar. The building was L-shaped, furnished with tables and chairs, underlit and overheated. He crossed to the bar.
‘I’ll have a cup of coffee,’ he said.
The man at the bar looked like an Italian, he had thin features and a twitch. At a table near the bar a truck-driver was eating. The rest of the tables near the bar were empty. It was round the corner where the noise was coming from. There one could partly see the illuminated bulk of a jukebox.
‘I fix you some eats?’ the Italian said.
‘No,’ Gently said. He paid for his coffee.
‘Some sandwiches, fruit?’ the Italian said.
Gently shrugged, walked away, the Italian watching him.
Round the corner they’d pushed the tables back and were sitting in a group. There were ten youths and six girls and, in the centre, an older man. Most of the youths wore black riding leathers, black sweaters, black boots. The others wore short, patterned jackets, black sweaters, black jeans. The girls wore various sweaters, black jeans, black b
allerinas. They all wore ban-the-bomb badges. They sat on chairs and on the floor.
Gently walked up to the group. He stood drinking his coffee. They didn’t stop beating out rhythm but all their eyes were fixed on him. One of the girls was Maureen Elton. She squealed something to her neighbour. The jukebox was turned up very loud, it was thumping out New Orleans Blues. The Italian came round the end of the bar, kept making gestures with his head to someone. The eyes that watched Gently didn’t have expression, they were just watchful, continuedly.
The jazz stopped, leaving a humming. The Italian went very still. From down by the counter came the clatter of the truck-driver’s cutlery. Three of the youths got to their feet, one of them strutted towards Gently. He had a handsome, fresh-complexioned face but with a wide mouth and a receding brow. He stood before Gently, hands on hips. Gently finished his coffee, put down the cup.
‘Like what gives?’ the youth said.
Gently didn’t say anything.
‘Like I’m asking you, square,’ the youth said.
Gently felt in his pocket for his pipe.
‘You want I clue you?’ the youth said. ‘Like you’re dumb or some jazz? We don’t go for squares in this scene. Like you’re smart you’ll blow pronto.’
Gently began filling his pipe.
‘Like you’re smart,’ the youth said.
Gently went on filling his pipe. ‘Sidney,’ he said, ‘you’d better sit down.’
The youth got up on his toes. ‘What’s that tag again?’ he said.
‘Sidney Bixley,’ Gently said.
‘Say it again,’ said the youth.
‘Sidney Bixley,’ Gently said. ‘Six months in Brixton for armed assault.’
He finished filling his pipe and lit it.
‘So just sit down, Sidney,’ he said.
There was a squawk from Maureen Elton. ‘He’s that screw I was shooting about. The one they’ve got down from the Smoke. Like he knows about you, Sidney.’
‘I don’t know that,’ Sidney said. He’d fetched his hands off his hips. ‘I don’t know nothing about screws. Like cocky squares I know about.’
‘He’ll hang you up,’ Maureen said.
‘Cocky squares,’ Sidney said.