“Pete isn’t quite right in the head,” he said.
His tongue shot out and licked at his upper lip.
“Well, Pete came up towards the counter. I was standing just where I am now. I thought he was going to hit me. I kept trying to make up my mind whether I’d try to call the police, or whether if I did they might find out. About my little sideline, you know. My little sideline.”
Ghote kept his features impassive.
“But Pete didn’t hit me,” Robin said. “No, he didn’t hit me. He went up to the juke box instead. I kept my robin on top of it then, just like I do now.”
He glanced over at the morose, huddled bird in the bright blue cage.
“Yes,” he said, “just as it might be now. And Pete caught hold of the cage and—and pulled the bars apart. In one go. And then he reached in and took hold of the poor birdie.”
Robin abandoned the screwed-up tea-towel and turned back to Ghote.
“He has a dog, you know,” he said. “A black sort of a dog. And he fed my birdie to it. Fed it to his dog. So after that I had to pay.”
He looked downwards at the well-polished surface of the counter.
“And one of those three Smith brothers was attracted by the Peacock?” Ghote asked.
“Yes. She was in here one day, just playing the juke box. And they came in. To collect, you know. Collect their weekly cut. And Billy—that’s the youngest—started chatting her up.”
The round face, slowly getting its ruddy colour back now, looked up at Ghote.
“Of course, if the girl had objected I wouldn’t have stood for it. You know that. I’d have had a quiet word with young Billy. Yes, a quiet word. But she didn’t object. Didn’t object at all.”
He looked over towards the juke box as if re-enacting the scene in his imagination.
“Mind you,” he said, “she didn’t make a play for him or anything like that. I’ll say that for her. But she was happy to let him chat her up. She was a bright kid, very bright kid. Knew all about it, she did.”
“Yes,” said Ghote.
He reflected that here was another person who had seen in the Peacock something bright and dazzling in a grey world.
“How long ago was this?” he asked.
“When she first met Billy? Oh, about six weeks ago, I’d say. Five or six weeks, if you want to put a time on it.”
He turned round and looked at a trade calendar pinned to the wall behind the chromium urn. It depicted a rumbustious coaching scene from the proud England of long ago. Ghote found it attractive.
“Yes, five or six weeks, I’d say,” Robin concluded.
“And after that she went out with him? On many nights?”
“Oh, no, no. You got me all wrong, you have. She wouldn’t really have anything to do with him. They met often enough of course. She’d be in here, laughing and joking at me to let her have a few of them pills. Only wanted ’em for a bit of a game, you know. That’s why I let her have them. And Billy comes in most evenings for a bit. So he’d start larking around with her, and she’d give him back as good as she got. But when he asked her to go out with him, she’d say no. Said she’d got a boy-friend of her own and didn’t want another. Quite definite on that, she was.”
“I see,” said Ghote. “But you told me she did leave here with him once. How was that?”
“Well,” Robin said, “she just did. He persuaded her. She kept telling him there was nothing in it for him, but he said come along all the same. And in the end she went.”
“And that was the last time you saw her?”
“I swear it was. I swear it. How was I to know the poor kid’s been killed? I haven’t seen nothing about it in the paper.”
“It is not certain yet she is dead,” Ghote answered. “But she has certainly not been seen since the night of October the twenty-first last. Was that when she was in here? It was Trafalgar Day.”
Robin peered up at his coaching-scene calendar. But it omitted to record the exact dates of stirring national occasions.
He shrugged.
“Yes,” he said, “October the twenty-first, that’d be it all right. A Friday. Yes.”
“What time did she leave with this Mr. Billy Smith?” Ghote asked.
Robin puffed out his cheeks and considered.
“It was early,” he said. “Quite earlyish. Say about seven. Yes, seven o’clock I’d say it was, give or take five minutes either side.”
“Thank you,” said Ghote. “And now tell me, please, where does he live? Where can I find him?”
Robin’s eyes seemed to bulge.
“You’re not going round to the Smiths’ house?” he said.
“Naturally I am. I am inquiring into the disappearance. Naturally I will have to question the person who was last seen with her on the day she disappeared.”
Again Robin pushed himself as far across the counter towards Ghote as his round little stomach would allow.
“Listen,” he said, “I never mentioned the Smith Boys’ name to you. I never so much as mentioned it.”
Ghote looked at him sternly.
“You are not going to tell me where they live?” he asked.
Robin drew himself up a little. His plum-coloured waistcoat swelled.
“I don’t even know,” he said. “I don’t know where they live at all.”
“You know quite well.”
But Robin’s lips had set in an obstinate pout.
“Why should I know?” he said. “Why should I know where some people who come into my café from time to time happen to live? I tell you, I just don’t know.”
Ghote looked at him unblinkingly.
“You are going to tell me.”
“Certainly not.”
“Yes.”
Robin was filling his fat little lungs as if to issue another defiant “no” when suddenly all the breath went out of him as rapidly as if he had been deflated with a pin.
His hand flew to his mouth and he sucked a little at the knuckles.
Ghote had noticed at the back of his mind that the bell on the door had pinged dully but, intent on Robin, he had paid no attention. He turned casually round now.
A big slouching dark-haired man was standing in the open doorway looking very slowly round the little café as if trying to puzzle out something unexpected. He had a heavy red complexion, further darkened by a stubble of black beard, and his mouth drooped a little bit open. He was dressed in dirty jeans, an open-necked check shirt and a heavy black leather jacket which he wore unzipped.
He stood astride, and through his legs it was possible to make out that a dog crouched behind him, a lop-sided, torn-eared black dog.
And Ghote realised whom it must be. Pete Smith. The one who had fed Robin’s pet bird to his dog.
“Where’s Jack? Billy?” Pete said in a slurred, difficult-to-make-out voice.
At the sound of it, Robin unexpectedly ducked down. For an instant Ghote thought he must be trying to hide, though, if so, he had certainly left it very late. But a moment later he saw him emerge through a little tunnel in the counter which he had not previously noticed.
Straightening up with a little gasp, Robin hurried over to the door.
“Not here, not here,” he said in a loud, clear voice.
He stood looking up at the huge shambling Pete from a distance of a couple of yards.
“Try somewhere else,” he said in the same loud, explaining voice. “Try the Duke of Wellington. They often drop in there for a drink. Try the Duke.”
Pete Smith just stood looking at him, his mouth still hanging a little open.
Then suddenly he took a lumbering pace forward.
Robin darted back as if he had been about to cross a road and a fast car had come swinging round a corner. Pete’s eyes lit up and he grinned. Ghote thought it was certainly not a pleasant grin.
But Robin’s display of understandable fear seemed to be enough to satisfy Pete. He lurched abruptly in the other direction and slumped down on to one of the
gaily painted red chairs. It creaked sharply under the impact.
“Wait,” he said in his thick, slurred voice. “Wait here. Thass it.”
He looked cumbersomely round. His dog came slinking up and crouched at his feet.
“Tea,” he said. “Fetch a cup o’ bloody tea, Robin.”
Robin swivelled round and scuttled back through his tunnel like a plump rabbit popping into its hole. In an extremely short time he had made a cup of tea, put it on the counter, darted back out again, picked the cup up and hurried over to the table near the door.
He put the cup down in front of Pete.
“All right?” he said ingratiatingly.
Pete grunted.
Robin turned and went back towards the counter, trying hard to stick out his chest under his plum-coloured waistcoat, and not succeeding.
Pete waited until his round little bottom was just disappearing through the counter tunnel. Then he shouted.
“Juke box.”
Robin stopped as if he had come slap-up against some blank obstacle. He backed rapidly out, straightened up with a louder gasp than before and trotted over to the juke box. He pulled a coin from his trouser pocket and hastily inserted it.
With his finger hovering over the half-dozen thick white buttons on the front of the old machine, he turned to Pete.
“‘It’s Love Only Love’?” he said. “All right? It’s a Johnny Bull.”
Pete grunted again.
Robin looked at him hard, trying to make out whether it had been a grunt of approval or dislike. It was plain he could not tell. In desperation he jabbed at the button under his finger.
Asthmatically the juke box began to play.
Robin looked at Pete. His big head began to nod slowly, half in time to the crude beat of the music. Robin’s face took on a less anxious look. He strolled back along the counter and then made a dive for his tunnel. This time he got through unmolested.
“I think I would like another cup of coffee, please,” said Ghote.
Robin darted him a look of petulant fury. But it did not seem to occur to him that he could do anything else but reach once more for the big red tin and measure out another spoonful of powder.
Ghote watched as he held the cup under the spurting tap of the battered chromium urn. When the hissing sound had stopped he offered a remark.
“I was most surprised,” he said, “on arriving in your country to find the weather was not very cold.”
Robin straightened up from the urn.
“Oh, yes?” he said in a painfully careless conversational tone.
He brought the cup to Ghote.
“I never told you a thing,” he whispered furiously under cover of the sound of Johnny Bull’s romantically yearning voice.
Ghote looked at him calmly.
“You do not need to worry,” he said quietly.
He took a sip of the coffee.
“Yes,” he said in a louder voice, “to tell the truth I was disappointed by the weather. I was prepared to resist the intense cold, and I found there was nothing to resist.”
Robin leant a little farther towards him over the counter.
“I wouldn’t speak like that if I were you,” he whispered.
He gave a tiny jerk of his head down the length of the café towards Pete.
“Doesn’t much care for coloureds,” he added.
“Well, I do not want to be the cause of unpleasantness for you,” Ghote said, in a much lower voice.
Robin glanced past him towards Pete. Evidently satisfied that Ghote was grating on no sensibilities, he resumed the conversation at a discreet level well masked by the continued rhythmical pleadings of Johnny Bull issuing wheezily but loudly from the old juke box.
“Makes it a bit awkward for me at times,” he murmured. “I do get a few Indian gentlemen in.”
He lowered his voice a little more.
“They want what I have to offer same as anybody else,” he said.
He gave Ghote a knowing little wink.
Ghote thought it best to let him go on.
“Yes,” he continued, “a bit awkward it makes it, at times.”
Suddenly a gleam of pleasure lit up his face.
“Why,” he said, “if you’re related to a certain person, then you must be related to one of my other customers too. Stoutish gentleman, wears what you might call national costume.”
Ghote felt puzzled. Could this be Vidur Datta he was talking about? The Vidur who had sworn he had never even seen the Robin’s Nest? Yet it sounded very like.
“Yes?” he said encouragingly.
“Now he’s very interested in something I sometimes have for sale,” Robin said. “Opium he cares for, opium just as it comes, you know.”
A light dawned. Vidur must be an opium-taker. That was what all the puja sessions would be about. A chance to take a nice relaxing dose of opium, to help stave off the impact of the Western way of life. No wonder he had been so anxious to deny knowing where the Robin’s Nest was. He must, of course, take it by mouth. The smell of smoking would be too obvious. But nevertheless that was what he was. An opium-taker. An old afim-wallah.
The self-righteous Vidur: it was hard not to laugh.
And at that instant, by purest luck, he realised that the café door was wide open.
In the enjoyment of Cousin Vidur’s unexpected discomfiture he had stopped paying proper attention to Pete Smith sitting slouched over his cup of tea by the door, and the insistent thud of Johnny Bull proclaiming “It’s Love Only Love” had blotted out entirely the clucking ping of the bell as the hulking moron had unexpectedly got up and left.
Banging down his coffee cup, Ghote turned and ran.
If he wanted to be led to the man who had last seen the Peacock alive, he must at all costs keep that man’s brother in sight.
TEN
At the door of the Robin’s Nest Ghote looked quickly to left and to right. There was no sign of Pete Smith or even of his slinking black dog.
Ghote’s heart sank. To have got so near being led straight to the very man he wanted to see, and then at the very outset of the trail to have lost his quarry. It was almost unbearable when things were going so well.
He turned and ran quickly into the Portobello Road itself. He looked up and down the narrow street.
And Pete Smith was there, shambling along some twenty yards away. The distance was ideal on a night like this with not many people about. With a sudden flood of new confidence, Ghote buttoned up his big coat and set off in quiet pursuit.
He kept close to the inside edge of the pavement and was careful to move quickly across the shopfronts that were lit up. He soon began to feel certain that, in spite of this unfamiliar environment, he was unlikely to be spotted if Pete should happen to glance back. Often in fact he should be hardly visible in the shadows cast by the glare of the high neon signs over the occasional grocer’s shop or cheap clothing store.
Pete appeared to be walking at a steady pace, keeping more or less to the middle of the pavement with his shoulders hunched and his big head down. A yard behind the black dog followed him, its belly close to the ground.
In the roadway cars swept by infrequently. The noise of their engines was almost the only sound to be heard above the constant, distant murmur of the great city itself.
Then, without any warning, from round the corner ahead there burst a group of half a dozen youngsters, sixteen or seventeen year olds, mostly wearing short, furry-collared coats over narrow trousers, and walking along shouting loudly to each other and breaking into sudden roars of pointless laughter. Within a few seconds they formed a solid screen between Ghote and his quarry.
He frowned in irritation.
The blockage would mean moving right over to the outside edge of the pavement or even into the roadway, and if Pete looked back then he might well take alarm. But there was nothing else for it. It was vital to keep him constantly in view. There could easily be odd narrow passages leading off a street like this between the
old, dingy houses above the cheaply smart shops. If Pete suddenly plunged into one of these, it would be almost impossible not to lose him.
He walked rapidly out across the pavement.
“Hey.”
It was one of the noisy group. He realised that the youth who had shouted had meant it for him, but he decided to ignore him. Quickly he stepped out into the road. Pete Smith was still shambling unconcernedly along, some thirty yards ahead now.
“Hey, you. Where d’you get that coat?”
The witticism was greeted by a tremendous yell of laughter from the rest of the gang. And, without a word being said, they promptly fanned out across the road in front of Ghote till they formed a semi-circle blocking his progress.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I am in somewhat of a hurry.”
He peered between the two tall youths nearest him. Pete’s hunched back was moving steadily away.
“In somewhat of a hurry.”
Another of the boys had mimicked his accent, hitting it off to a T. He could not prevent a hot flush of shame rising to his cheeks.
“’Ere,” came another voice, “what you got under that hairy great green thing anyhow? Got a bit of cloth tucked between your legs?”
Ghote thought hard. It would be no good trying to push past. That would only make them worse. And they could keep him where he was for more than long enough to let Pete get clean away.
He could turn and run. He had a notion that despite the weight of his coat he could probably outstrip his tormentors. But if he ran, he would be running in the opposite direction from Pete.
“Come on, mate, open up,” the first youth said. “Let’s see what gear they wear in the jungle then.”
And at once Ghote knew what he had to do.
Without a word, he undid the buttons of his coat from top to bottom. Then he held it wide open so that the full extent of his wardrobe could be clearly inspected.
“Do you wish me to take off my jacket?” he asked. “And my shirt? Perhaps you would like to be sure my skin is the same colour all the way down? Should I take off my trousers?”
The gang glanced from one to the other. Nobody said anything. Not one of them looked anywhere near their victim.
And then suddenly a voice came from the edge of the group.
Inspector Ghote Hunts the Peacock Page 11
