by Alan Hunter
‘Did you see them together,’ Gently asked, ‘any time during the evening?’
‘I run this show,’ Leach said. ‘Do you think I’ve got time to see who’s with who?’
‘Did you?’ Gently asked.
Leach leaned on the rostrum. ‘Whose been talking?’ he said.
‘People do talk,’ Gently said. ‘Did you see Lister and Elton together?’
Leach kept leaning. He was thoughtful. ‘Maybe I did see something,’ he said.
‘Something you didn’t tell us before?’
‘Yeah,’ Leach said. ‘Something I didn’t tell you.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ Gently asked.
‘Reasons,’ Leach said. ‘I had my reasons. Maybe I could see it looked bad for Elton. I don’t like sicking the screws on a customer.’
‘Even though he might be a murderer?’ Gently asked.
‘Elton ain’t no murderer,’ Leach said. ‘But that was the way the screws were looking at it, that he’d got a grudge and knocked Lister off.’
‘What was it you didn’t tell us?’ Gently asked.
‘Well,’ Leach said, ‘I broke up a row they was having.’
He licked his lips, flashed a probing look at Gently. Gently wasn’t looking at Leach at all. He’d just noticed that the round mirror which hung on the half-landing of the stairs reflected another, higher, mirror, which gave a view down the bar. It was neat. He could see the blonde paying change into the till.
‘Here in the milk bar?’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ Leach said. ‘That’s right.’
‘Nobody else mentioned it,’ Gently said.
‘Well,’ Leach said, ‘it was in the toilet.’
‘Tell me what happened,’ Gently said.
‘Yeah, in the toilet,’ Leach said. ‘About ten o’clock, I think it was, the band was having its refreshments. So I went into the toilet and there were these charlies shouting the odds. Elton was going to knock Lister’s block off, he’d swiped his girlfriend or some caper. I could see he meant it too, he’d got an ugly look in his eye. So I broke it up. I give them the warning. Round about ten o’clock, that was.’
‘Nice of you to remember,’ Gently said.
‘Yeah,’ Leach said. He put the lid on the box.
‘We might never have known about it,’ Gently said.
Leach tied on the ribbon, placed the box on the pile.
Another customer had come into the bar upstairs, a dingy old man with the appearance of a pensioner. He seemed to be having quite a conversation with the blonde whose doubtfulness was expressed by her attitude and gestures. Leach looked at the mirrors, then at Gently. He patted the box, rearranged the ribbon.
‘That’s just a dodge of mine,’ he said. ‘Got to keep an eye on the till when you’re down here.’
‘On your customers, too,’ Gently said.
‘Well,’ Leach said, ‘they don’t all come from Mayfair.’
Now the old man had produced an envelope and handed it to the blonde. The blonde turned her back to open it, then nodded, glancing at the cellar entrance. She reached underneath the bar.
‘Now see this mike-’ Leach began, moving.
‘Hold it.’ Gently pushed him aside.
What the blonde had handed over was a box of chocolates.
Gently was up on the instant, ran down the cellar and up the stairs. Leach came bolting after him shouting, trying to catch hold of his jacket. The old man was opening the door to go out. He stopped in surprise as the two men rushed in. Gently grabbed the box away from him, planted himself panting against the door. The blonde chose the moment to let go a scream. A customer knocked over a chair as he jumped to his feet.
‘You give that back to him!’ Leach was shouting. ‘You give that back to him, or I’ll do you!’
‘Get over there,’ Gently ordered him. ‘He’ll have the box after I’ve seen it.’
‘What’s going on?’ said the customer, a navvy.
‘Police,’ Gently said. ‘In pursuit of a felony.’
‘It’s a bloody lie!’ Leach shouted, white-faced. ‘It’s him committed felony — he’s pinched those chocolates!’
‘They’re not mine,’ the old man was quavering. ‘Please give them back to me, they belong to someone else.’
Gently motioned to the navvy. ‘Guard this door,’ he said. The navvy looked stupid, but he moved in front of the door. Gently took the box to a table, stripped the ribbon from it and lifted the lid. Under brown corrugated wrapping lay a neat layer of chocolates.
‘Look at them,’ Leach was beginning. ‘Bleeding chocolates, that’s all.’
But Gently had scooped the chocolates out and lifted the separator that was under them. He stood back.
‘Just chocolates?’
The second layer was of cigarettes. Slightly brownish, loosely made, there would be four to five hundred of them.
‘Gawd,’ Leach said, ‘gawd.’ His face was a greyish mess.
‘Any comment?’ Gently asked.
‘Yeah,’ Leach said. ‘I didn’t know about them.’
‘Save it,’ Gently said. He turned to the old man, who stood pop-eyed. ‘What do you know about it?’ he asked. ‘Where did you get the money for these?’
The old man swallowed, shook his head. ‘I was asked to come in and get them,’ he said. ‘A young man gave me ten shillings to collect them. He said there was someone here who he didn’t want to see.’
‘Where were you taking them?’ Gently rapped.
The old man winced. ‘Just over in the car park. I was out for my airing when this young man accosted me. He’s waiting there by his motorcycle for me to bring them back.’
Gently hesitated, picked up the box. ‘Take me to him,’ he said. He looked at the navvy. ‘See these people don’t leave,’ he ordered him. ‘They’re to stay right where they are, not to move from this room. If they try, put your head out and bawl for the police and assistance.’
He pushed the pensioner through the door, took his arm across the street. The park by now was pretty solid with cars and several people were moving amongst them.
‘How was he dressed?’ Gently muttered.
‘He was dressed for motorcycling,’ said the pensioner. ‘If we keep this side of the cars he shouldn’t see us till we’re nearly up to him.’
They kept to that side of the cars, the pensioner trotting along jerkily. When they were three-quarters of the way across he pulled hard on Gently’s arm.
‘He’s over there,’ he whispered, ‘by that fire-hydrant place.’
‘Keep with me,’ Gently said. He disengaged his arm.
But just then a motor roared on the other side of the hydrant station. Gently belted through the cars, hurled himself round the small building. He caught only a glimpse of a powerful bike cornering sharply into a back street, its black-leathered rider lying it close, its registration plate invisible. The pensioner came stuttering after Gently.
‘That’s him!’ he exclaimed, ‘That’s him!’
Gently stood clutching his box. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s him.’
He returned to the milk bar where the navvy remained dutifully guarding the entrance. Leach was sitting on one of the bar-stools, the blonde was snivelling into a handkerchief. Leach’s eyes glittered when he saw Gently come back with the pensioner only, but he didn’t say anything, kept his face sullenly averted. Gently confronted him.
‘Who was he?’ he asked.
‘How should I know?’ Leach said. ‘I don’t know nothing about this caper. I’m being used, that’s what it is.’
‘You,’ Gently said to the blonde. ‘Who were you expecting to pick that box up?’
‘She don’t know nothing,’ Leach put in quickly. ‘She wouldn’t be such a bloody fool as to know anything.’
‘That’s right,’ the blonde sobbed, ‘I don’t know nothing. I serve behind the bar, that’s all I do.’
‘Give me that envelope,’ Gently said.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ sob
bed the blonde.
‘Just the envelope,’ Gently said. ‘The one this gentleman here handed you.’
‘He didn’t hand me no envelope.’
‘Let’s keep polite about it,’ Gently said. ‘He handed you a fat manilla envelope, after which you gave him the chocolates.’
‘It’s down the front of her dress,’ said the navvy unexpectedly. ‘I saw her shove it there while you were out.’
‘So?’ Gently said.
The blonde looked murderous. She felt in her bosom, tossed the envelope on the bar. Gently lifted it by one corner and let the contents slip out. They were a bundle of forty or so pound notes, old ones, held together with a rubber band.
‘That’s a lot of money for a box of chocolates.’
‘It was owed us,’ Leach snapped. ‘We don’t know nothing about what was in the chocolates.’
‘But you’ll know who owed you the money.’
Leach made a rude suggestion. ‘Bloody find out,’ he added. ‘We’ve said all we’re going to say.’
Gently sat amiably on another bar-stool. He slowly filled and lit his pipe. When it was alight he blew two rings, placing one of them in the other.
‘You’re in a bit of a jam, Leach,’ he said.
Leach was impolite again.
‘You’ll be going away,’ Gently continued. ‘You’ll be going away for quite a spell. This isn’t the only box, is it? You’ve been filling some more down in the cellar. You’ve got a stock of reefers here, you’re the local distributor for the top boys.’
‘I’m being used, I tell you,’ Leach said. ‘I’ve never seen them things before.’
Gently shook his head. ‘You won’t make it stand up, Joe. Look at it squarely. You’re due for a rest.’
‘I ought to have pitched you,’ Leach said, spitting.
‘We’ll let that pass,’ Gently said. ‘But you’re in a jam right up to your ears, and if you’re wise you’ll stop trying to buck it. Because a kind word could make a difference to you, Joe. And I’m the one who could put in the kind word.’
‘You think I can’t see it coming?’ Leach said.
‘Who was this box for?’ Gently asked.
‘I wouldn’t know, would I?’ Leach said, sneering. It don’t happen to have a name and address.’
‘Where are you getting the stuff from, Joe?’
‘Look for the trademark on it,’ said Leach.
‘It’ll be maybe worth a year to you, Joe.’
‘Yeah, but I value my health higher,’ Leach said.
‘I’ll tell you something else,’ the navvy said. ‘I keep my eyes about me, I do.’
‘You keep quiet, you bastard,’ Leach snapped.
‘You better look in that coffee machine,’ the navvy said.
Leach came off the stool in a whirlwind of fists. Gently caught him, heaved, sent him crashing among the tables. He went to the coffee machine, the lid of which was awry. He looked inside. In the bubbling black coffee floated a green-covered notebook. He fished it out with a fork.
‘Blimey!’ said the navvy, looking at Leach.
‘Nice work,’ Gently said. ‘We could use your sort in the Force.’
He separated some pages of the sodden notebook. It contained dates, figures, and some notes of money. And on the inside of the cover appeared a telephone number with a London code prefixed to it.
‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘You’ve been a little careless, Joe.’
Leach kept sitting on the floor. He said a number of things that were not nice.
CHAPTER SIX
Gently hung on at Castlebridge while the local police were in action, but neither Leach nor the blonde seemed inclined to be more helpful. Two other counter assistants arrived at the milk bar during the morning, but on interrogation it was soon apparent that they knew nothing of the trade in reefers. A considerable haul was made in the cellar. Leach had concealed his store under the planking of the dais. It consisted of fifteen sauce-bottle cartons each containing a thousand reefers, while another three thousand were found packed in the boxes of chocolates.
The local inspector, Cartwright, was dubiously cordial towards Gently, at times was plainly miffed by this discovery in his area. When he elicited that Gently had wasted no time in talking to the Yard about the matter he became respectfully frigid and held himself at a distance.
Gently’s call had been to Pagram, his opposite number in the Central Office, giving him the telephone number he had found in Leach’s notebook.
‘Is this helping your case?’ Pagram had asked him.
Gently didn’t know himself. ‘If it takes you Bethnal way,’ he’d said, ‘I shall like to know about that. A lot of the overspill population has come to Latchford from Bethnal. You know we’ve got Sid Bixley here. Keep his name where you can see it.’
Pagram’d chuckled. ‘Is he your bunnie?’
‘I’m interested,’ Gently had said. ‘He’s got an alibi that seems to cover him, but it’s only sixty per cent proof.’
The trouble was there was no way of bringing Bixley’s alibi to proof. That he’d left the milk bar fifteen minutes after Lister had been established by fairly reliable witnesses. Some Castlebridge acquaintances who knew them both had seen Lister leaving early, they’d invited him to have one for the road and had been surprised by his abrupt refusal. Then fifteen minutes had elapsed while they drank that last shake, and when they left they had been accompanied by Bixley and Anne Wicks. In between Elton had left. He’d been seen leaving soon after Lister. Yet it was possible that this order had been changed over the twenty or so miles to the scene of the crash. Lister might have ridden the first part slowly, Elton might have lost some time, say, at Oldmarket. The alibi was a good one but it didn’t completely exclude Bixley.
In a quiet corner of the milk bar Gently had interrogated the pensioner. His name was Edwin Jukes. He badly wanted to be helpful. He recounted carefully how he’d met the ‘young man’ as he was skirting along the car park, and how he’d been saluted as ‘Dad’ and offered the ten shillings to fetch the chocolates.
‘How old would this young man be?’ Gently asked.
‘That I couldn’t say,’ Jukes quavered.
‘Twenty? Thirty?’ Gently suggested.
‘Oh, he was a youngster all right,’ Jukes said.
‘What colour were his hair and eyes?’ asked Gently.
‘Well,’ Jukes said, ‘he was wearing a hat thing. I didn’t notice his eyes. I don’t see very grand. I’m nigh on eighty if I live to see Christmas.’
‘Was he tall?’ Gently asked.
‘He was taller than I am,’ Jukes said. ‘And I’m five foot seven, if that’s any help.’
‘Did he speak like a local boy?’
Jukes was baffled by that one. ‘I can’t,’ he said, ‘say he did, nor I can’t say he didn’t.’
He was able however to confirm Gently’s impression that the youth was dressed all in black: black helmet, black leathers, black boots, and black gloves. He’d produced the envelope from a breast pocket without removing the gloves and had promised to pay the ten shillings when Jukes returned with the chocolates. The person he wished to avoid, he said, was the blonde at the counter.
‘There’s nothing else at all you can tell me about him?’ Gently asked.
‘Why yes,’ said Jukes. ‘He was a very familiar young man.’
‘You mean you’ve seen him before?’ Gently asked. ‘Oh, no, no,’ Jukes said. ‘But he called me Dad, and I’m not partial to that.’
Gently had lunch at the Copper Kettle, then called back at the Castlebridge H.Q., but the prints on the envelope, which he’d asked to have processed, were only those of Jukes and the blonde. Inspector Cartwright was obsequious.
‘I’m sorry we can’t be more helpful,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’ll have better luck with the Yard.’
‘Yeah,’ Gently said. ‘And thanks.’
After lunch it had turned cloudy. He was stuck with traffic as far as Oldmarket. An R.A.F. trailer
carrying a bomber fuselage was holding his line of traffic in check. At the top of Oldmarket High it turned right and brought everything to a standstill, spreading itself in little jerks till it was clear across both lanes. Past Oldmarket things improved and he was able to cruise in the sixes. People were still at lunch, maybe, they weren’t yet cluttering up the roads. He was beyond Barford Mills and watching for a sight of the Gallows Tree when he first noticed in his mirror the two motorcycles behind him.
Side by side they were riding, around a quarter of a mile behind him, linked together so closely that for a moment he took them for a small car. He watched them corner. It was a precision movement, the two bikes leaning over in concert. And even at the distance of a quarter of a mile he could see that the riders were clad in black.
He gave the 75 some gas, let her press up into the eights. For a while he lost his twin pursuers behind a truck and a double bend. Then he saw them again, closing in slightly, cutting the distance by a hundred yards. They settled down at that distance. They were obviously stalking him.
Gently shrugged, kept the 75 skimming along at eight and a half. They could chase him if they wanted to, but there was no percentage in that. It would take more than motorcyclists to stop him, if they had any such intention, and on a frequented main road it would be foolish to attempt it in any case. All the same he was very curious about those two black-leathered riders. He found himself wishing he was in a squad car with radio contact with the local patrols.
The Gallows Tree rose on his left and he crested the ridge into Five Mile Drove. The road lay dully stretching ahead under the grey cloak of October wrack. There was little on it. He pressed the 75 harder. She began to labour at the top of her compass. With the slope assisting she drifted into the nines and held it there, several short of the century. He glanced in his mirror. They were still coming. More, they were closing the distance again. They were bettering his speed by a sizable margin, ten, maybe fifteen miles an hour. And this time they weren’t settling behind him: they were coming up to pass.
He eased the 75 slightly to give himself a margin of acceleration, watched them leaping now towards him, their handlebars pretty well touching. They wore goggles and black scarves which covered the bottom halves of their faces, their bikes appeared to be sheeted in some way: he could see the black plastic flapping. And still they came, straight behind him, making no move to pull out. It was as though they intended to ride flush into the rear of the 75.