“Aw, let’s leave ’im. It’s a nutter.”
And as rapidly as they had materialised, the whole pack slipped past and went hurrying on up the street. Ten yards away they abruptly began shoving each other from side to side and whooping loudly in their relief at escaping the unnerving spectacle of the totally abject.
Ghote darted a glance ahead.
He was in luck. Pete Smith had come to a halt outside a scrubby-looking old cinema boldly labelled “The Imperial.” He was standing gazing at the posters plastered on its front, which, even from a distance, Ghote could see advertised an action-packed Western in highly colourful terms.
He breathed a long sigh of relief and set out quietly towards the sad old building with its once proud dome outlined black against the night sky and its front, from which at some stage the heavy ornamentation had fallen away, presenting an oddly piebald appearance by the light of the street-lamps.
But before he had got as close to Pete again as he would have liked the big moron swung clumsily round, headed across the roadway heedless of an approaching vehicle and plunged into a turning opposite.
Ghote had to wait till the vehicle, a rattly old station-wagon, had gone by. He ran across the black strip of road as soon as he could, tore along to the corner and peered round.
Pete was still in sight. But now he was walking much more quickly and already he had got a great deal too far ahead for peace of mind.
The street in front was noticeably quieter than the Portobello Road itself. The houses were taller, five or six stories, and were dark and very grimy. They seemed to Ghote, walking rapidly but lightly past, to lean over towards the road with a louring solidity that houses in Bombay, no matter what the light and what the time, never came near to acquiring. For the most part there were no lights showing and the single thinly curtained windows that were lit up here and there made oblongs of glowing colour that put the rest of the background into yet deeper blackness. Many of the houses’ high pillared porticoes over the steep steps leading up to their doors were badly in need of repair. Almost every wall could have done with a coat of paint many years before.
This was a new London to Ghote. It seemed far removed from the luxuries of Sloane Street and the Carlton Tower or the quiet neatness and good order of the streets round the Tagore House. It was remote too even from the comparative poverty of the tower block where Patsy and Renee lived. That, though plain, had been strikingly new and clean. Here there was only ingrained dirt and unrelieved shabbiness.
A few battered-looking cars were parked by the roadside but hardly a person was to be seen. It would be madness to break into a noisy run in the circumstances.
He hurried on at as fast a walk as he dared, keeping on the balls of his toes and leaning slightly forward as he went.
He passed a garden square on his left. But it was very different from the one near Marble Arch with its trim rectangle of lawn and elegant drooping plane trees. This was a long, broad strip of overgrown grass, tall and pale brown under the light of the street-lamps. It was entirely surrounded by a high wire-mesh fence, so that it looked almost as if it was being desperately protected against a prowling savage life outside.
Ghote shivered.
And still Pete was too far ahead. There were fewer lights now and from time to time he would be lost in an area of shadow. Ghote could hardly bear to wait for him to appear in the succeeding patch of light. Pete would only need to swing off and nip down the steps leading to the basement of one of the houses to be lost completely.
There were smaller intersecting streets too. The thought of their dangers had hardly come into Ghote’s head when Pete, without slackening in his headlong pace, did wheel suddenly round and disappear from sight down one of them.
At once Ghote broke into a run. But it seemed to be an incredibly long time before he reached the corner at last and flung himself round.
The street ahead, much like the one he had been going along though narrower and even less well-lit, was completely empty.
Ghote stood at the corner in utter dismay. It must not be true. Pete could not have disappeared. Yet, quite obviously, it was very possible. Although the street was not long, three other small roads led off it. Pete could have taken any one of them in the time he had been out of observation.
Ghote stared with hatred at the black length of roadway that stretched in front of him, at the empty yellow-grey pavements, at the tall dark houses, at the high, depressing red-brick wall of a school yard, at a set of distant, winking, meaningless traffic-lights.
And then he saw it.
Just at the corner of the second turning along: a little, low-bellied black dog lifting its leg against the corner wall.
A moment more and it had slunk out of sight. But Ghote knew it. Pete’s dog.
He tore forward again and rounded the corner at speed, and there only fifteen yards away was Pete. Ghote teetered forward as he brought himself to a sharp halt. Then he quietly set off in pursuit once more.
Almost immediately Pete turned in at an archway between two darkened little shops. Ghote thought with a sweat of relief how completely lost he would have been if he had been out of sight a moment longer.
Quickly he walked forward. There was no knowing what might lie on the far side of the archway. There could be a number of different little alleyways. He must keep right on Pete’s tail.
He nipped round into the arch, and at once almost froze with fright.
The whole entrance was cluttered with empty milk bottles. His right foot had just tipped one of them and it was rocking like a teetotum. He remained frozen, perched over it, watching helplessly. If it should fall …
But at last the rocking died away. Ghote dared to look ahead. At the far end of a short length of cobbled lane, which was glistening slightly in the faint light coming from the street behind, Pete was standing at the top of a low flight of stone steps in front of a battered-looking, almost paintless door of a small, dark house. He was searching all through his pockets as if he could not find his key.
Ghote drew back a little into the cover of the side of the archway and watched.
For a few moments longer the great hulk on the steps swore mumblingly away to himself. Then his patience appeared to give out. He grunted out a louder curse and delivered a thump on the battered surface of the door sufficient to split it in two. But nothing happened. He began thumping a tattoo which thundered and echoed round the narrow yard like cannonfire.
Ghote, looking from side to side, saw that opposite the house Pete was trying to get into there was one enormous wall with, high up in it, a line of tall windows grimly barred. He decided that it must be the back of the school he had seen earlier. On either side of the Smiths’ house there were similar doors to the one Pete was attacking. But from neither of these other houses did a chink of light show and a pane in one of the ground-floor windows of the further one was gaping and broken. It looked as if the whole trio were due for demolition. London seemed to be pulsating with new building. Perhaps tall towers like Patsy’s home were intended for this very spot. It was high time.
Abruptly the door on which Pete was thumping opened.
Ghote saw that a short, stout woman of sixty or so was standing there looking up at Pete with an expression of dazed pleasure on her broad, snub-nosed face across which a heavy strand of dark grey hair was trailing. She wore a huge closely-flowered apron, which covered most of her front, an enormous stretched, shapeless purple cardigan and on her bare feet a pair of bright red slippers one of which was decorated with a massive pom-pom.
“Cor,” she said in a loudly careless voice, “you don’t half make a row, Pete, when you bang on the door like that.”
Pete glowered at her.
“What you want to shut it for, Ma?” he said.
Mrs. Smith burst into a wheezy, stifled laugh.
“What do I want to shut it for? It’s your brothers as want it shut. It’s all the same to me whether it’s shut or open. So long as there’s plenty
of paraffin for the heaters. But they will have it shut, and you will leave it open. Oh dear, oh dear.”
She tailed away into a long outbreak of even wheezier laughter while Pete stood on the top step looking down at her.
“Well, move out of the bloody way now you are here,” he said slowly at last.
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.”
Still wheezing and laughing, Mrs. Smith heaved herself round and waddled off in front of her son along a narrow passage into the depths of the house.
Ghote, from his vantage point at the end of the little alley, noticed that once again Pete had left the door wide open. Evidently someone inside the house noticed it too, because a moment later there was an angry, deep-voiced yell and Pete came shambling back and banged the door closed.
The yell was very pleasing to Ghote. It must mean the two other Smith brothers were probably at home. His chance to question Billy looked as if it had come.
Taking a deep breath, he marched into the narrow unlit alley and across to the short flight of tumbledown steps. He climbed them and looked for the doorbell. All there was was a knocker, a rusty iron dolphin, forgotten reminder of a great nation’s mercantile history. Ghote took hold of it but found it was too rusted to budge. Evidently visitors were unwelcome.
He doubled up his fist and banged on the old door as Pete Smith had done before him, though not with the same thunderous effect. After a little he stopped and waited.
Silence.
He was lifting his fist to try again when from the far side of the door he made out the faint sound of footsteps on bare, creaky boards.
The door opened. A young man of about twenty, with a distinct family resemblance to the moronic Pete but a great deal livelier in appearance, stood there. Behind him, shadowy in the light of a dim electric bulb, were Pete himself and another brother, older, darker and grim with suspicion, doubtless Jack, the one who had done the talking when the three of them had first asked Robin for protection money.
Looking up at Billy, Ghote saw that the tone of the encounter had to be firmly set at once or he would be met with a barrier of silence.
“Good evening,” he said cheerfully, “is it Mr. Billy Smith?”
The blackly suspicious Jack made a move in the background as if he had half a mind to stride past Billy and slam the door without a word more being said. But before he could move Billy had answered.
“That’s right,” he said brightly, “what you want?”
“You know an Indian girl they call the Peacock?” Ghote asked quickly.
Would the battered, paintless door come smashing into his face? If he had got to the heart of things, it well might
But Billy’s face retained its look of carefree inquiringness.
“Yeh,” he said. “I know her all right. Nice kid. What about her?”
“When did you last see her please?”
“’Bout three weeks ago,” Billy answered unhesitatingly. “I been wondering where she’s got to. You know her then?”
The apparent easiness of his replies posed more queries than Ghote had time to think about answering at that moment. He was tempted to explain who he was. But he decided it was important to keep up his stream of questions while Billy seemed to be willing to reply to them. He might not always be as affable as this.
“The last time you saw her,” he went rapidly on, “whereabouts was that?”
“Met her in a place called Robin’s caff,” Billy answered. “Took her up West to a discothèque place.”
“And after that?”
“After that nothing, mate. I don’t mind telling you it wasn’t for want of trying. But I couldn’t spend all night arguing, and—”
He stopped.
Behind him, somewhere in the house, a telephone bell had begun to ring shrilly. The sound surprised Ghote. It seemed odd that a tumbledown place like this should have anything like a telephone.
Billy and the others listened warily to the ringing. Then it ceased.
“Ma’s there,” Billy said.
He turned his attention back to Ghote.
“What’s all this about anyhow?” he said.
His eyes, for all the openness of his broad, weather-beaten face under his curly mop of dark hair, were sharp.
Ghote realised that he would have to risk giving away some of his intentions.
“It is very simple,” he said. “This girl, the Peacock, has disappeared. It looks as if you may have been the last to see her. Can you tell me where this was?”
“It was Oxford Circus,” Billy said, hardly less cheerfully than before. “She said she’d go home by Tube. They was still running.”
“And what was her state of mind then?”
Billy shrugged.
“Well, she was a bit sort of hoity-toity like,” he said. “Like I told you she wasn’t having any. Wouldn’t even let me run her back home in the van, though I could’ve spared the time. She kept going on about this boy-friend, and—”
“Billy. Billy. Phone.”
It was the loud, carefree voice of Mrs. Smith. Her bellow blotted out anything more Billy might have been going to say.
He turned round and yelled back.
“Coming.”
Pushing past his brothers he disappeared into the interior of the dark and dingy house. The two others stayed where they were, Jack eyeing Ghote with the same heavy suspicion he had shown from the outset and Pete looking at him with almost total vacancy.
Ghote hoped profoundly it would not occur to the latter to say suddenly that he had seen him before in the Robin’s Nest. If Jack began to think some investigation of their activities was under way, his reaction was likely to be unpleasant. Perhaps there was something that could be done to get on his right side.
“Excuse me,” he said to him, “were you with your brother on the evening in question?”
Jack glared at him. But eventually he muttered an answer.
“We was in the caff.”
“Ah, so you cannot much help me,” Ghote said reassuringly.
“No.”
“The girl seemed quite all right when you saw her?”
“Yeh.”
Then to Ghote’s surprise Jack added a small comment.
“Yapped a lot,” he said. “Always did, every time Billy was there.”
Ghote felt delighted. Even in this unpromising territory he was making some progress.
“And the last you yourself saw of her was in this café?” he said.
“That’s right. S’pose I might’ve noticed her if she’d been about since. She was the kind of kid you did notice.”
Once more Ghote recorded the tribute to the Peacock’s bright gaiety. It was a tribute from a source that looked sparing enough of such comments.
But now Billy reappeared. He came through a door far down along the passage and began an intense, whispered conversation with Pete. After a few moments Pete shambled down the flight of stairs Ghote could dimly make out at the end of the passage. Billy came back to the steps.
“I was just asking your brother,” Ghote said to him, “whether the Peacock behaved quite as usual earlier in the evening of that day. He said she did.”
“Yep.”
Billy seemed less willing to talk now, and Ghote cursed the interruption for destroying the easy exchange he had managed to establish.
“Tell me,” he said quickly, “did she ever mention Johnny Bull to you? Johnny Bull, the singer?”
“Yep.”
There could be no doubt about it: Billy was a great deal less willing to tell him anything. He decided that all he could do was to keep pegging away.
“So she did mention Johnny,” he said. “Did she say anything particular about him?”
“He was the boy-friend.”
“Ah, yes. Thank you for telling me that. Do you happen to know him yourself?”
“’Course not.”
Inwardly Ghote fumed. What on earth had Billy got into his head while he had been away? The contrast between his pleasa
nt talkativeness before and his almost complete silence now must have some explanation.
“Did the Peacock tell you very much about Johnny?” he asked patiently.
“Not much.”
“But she told you she was in love with him?”
“Yep.”
“And did she say that he no longer—”
Suddenly from the arched entrance to the little alley there came an appalling crash. Ghote whipped round.
In the rectangle of light from the nearest street-lamp an extraordinary scene presented itself. All over the cobbled ground under the archway milk-bottles were rolling, clashing and skittering. And in the middle of them, arms flailing, legs splayed apart, body almost bent double in an effort to keep upright, was the totally inexplicable sight of Pete Smith.
ELEVEN
For an instant the apparition of the hulking, moronic Pete in the archway behind, when scarcely a minute before, it seemed, he had been standing with his brothers in the narrow passage of the house in front, left Ghote utterly bewildered. Then, without having time to reason it all out, he knew what had happened. Pete had been sent round a back way by Billy. And he had been sent because Billy had learnt something about him himself. Had learnt from that phone call. A call from Robin, of the Robin’s Nest, of course.
In one flying bound he jumped from the top of the steps and headed hard towards the rectangle of light in the archway, the only way out of the little blind alley. If he could only get through before Pete recovered his balance, he might yet be all right.
The arch was about ten feet wide and Pete was floundering about well to the right-hand side. There should be room to shoot by.
Ghote swerved and plunged forward. All round his feet he could see the glinting, silvery shapes of the rolling bottles. He did not dare look anywhere but downwards. His feet darted and danced. The treacherous bottles swung and swivelled on every side of them.
And then the two yards of danger, which seemed interminable, were past. He was out on the pavement of the street beyond. Pete was still waving his arms and lumbering about, but that was behind him. It was even something which would serve to delay his brothers as they came after him.
Inspector Ghote Hunts the Peacock Page 12
