Forests of the Night

by David Stuart Davies

  Well, I’d done my best. Well, the best I could muster after a long day and several whiskies. What the hell, it really was no concern of mine. This thought had hardly entered my mind before I rejected it. I hadn’t done anywhere near my best and it was a concern of mine. I swore and then put on the kettle. A mug of scalding tea and a cigarette would civilize me and sharpen the brain. My pal at Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector David Llewellyn, might be able to help. He certainly would be able to provide me with a list of any dark-haired boys of about ten years old who had been reported missing in the last week. By the state of Peter’s coat (if Peter was his real name, of course), he’d not been living rough for more than three or four nights. And then I could do the rounds of the down and out shelters along the Embankment and see if I could pick up a scent. Well, I’d be guaranteed to pick up a scent mixing with the army of the great unwashed. What I meant was a clue. At least it would give me something to do. A purpose.

  I sat at the table, pouring the hot tea down my throat, wondering where the poor blighter was now. However much that little bastard voice at the back of my mind tried to deny the fact, I was involved and I had to do something about it.

  Ah, but it’s the way of the world: when one makes definite plans, something crops up to disturb then. By 9.30 I had got myself washed, dressed and presentable. With a smooth but slightly bloody chin courtesy of a geriatric razor blade, a clean collar round my neck and two slices of toast within me, I was feeling almost human again and ready to make my way to Scotland Yard when my office doorbell rang.

  That could only mean one thing: I had a client. Or clients to be precise. There were two of them: a middle-aged man and woman. They stood on my doorstep, side by side as though they had fallen off a shabby wedding cake. They introduced themselves as Mr and Mrs Palfrey – Eric and Freda. If I were a film director shooting a sequence where I needed a dull, middle-class couple in their late forties with precise manners and limited imagination, Mrs and Mrs Palfrey would be ideal casting.

  The matter was obviously urgent. One could tell that by the way Mr Palfrey gripped his rolled umbrella, trying to strangle the furl and Mrs Palfrey tapped her nails on her shiny imitation crocodile-skin handbag.

  I sat them down in my office, while I perched above them on the edge of my desk. ‘How can I help you?’ I said, smiling benevolently.

  ‘I’m afraid our Pamela is absent without leave,’ said Eric Palfrey with a nervous grin, staring at me through a pair of spectacles borrowed from Arthur Askey. He had a precise manner of speech as though he had rehearsed his lines several times before spouting them.

  My smile turned to a puzzled frown. ‘I’m sorry…’

  ‘What Father means,’ interrupted Freda Palfrey, ‘is our daughter Pamela has left home … is missing. She’s been gone two months now.’

  Left home. Who could blame the girl? I was already beginning to feel edgy with the Palfreys and I’d only been in their company for a few minutes.

  ‘How old is your daughter?’

  ‘She is twenty-seven,’ said Father, as though describing the blackest sin in the Bible. His tone and the curl of his lip suggested that to be twenty-seven and female was the equivalent of being a brothel keeper in either Sodom or Gomorrah – or both.

  ‘Has there been a row? Did she leave because of some disagreement?’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Palfrey.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Palfrey, the drumming nails now reaching a frenzied crescendo.

  I stared at them blankly.

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Palfrey, ‘I suppose it depends on how you define a row or disagreement.’

  ‘How do you see the matter, Mrs Palfrey?’ I asked, ignoring Father for the moment.

  ‘Pamela had a perfectly good job working as a typist for a very nice solicitor in Bermondsey, but her head was always filled with film star rubbish. All her free time was spent at the pictures or reading those terrible film magazines. She was besotted by it all. She got it into her head that she wanted to work in films. But we told her it wasn’t a respectable occupation for a young lady.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ snapped Mr Palfrey. ‘These film people are not our sort at all. They’re rather common individuals leading shallow and tawdry lives.’

  I nodded sympathetically.

  Mrs Palfrey continued, ‘Then Pamela came to know this girl … Samantha. I don’t know her last name. We never met her. Apparently Samantha worked at Denham Film Studios in the offices and she would fill Pamela’s head with all sorts of nonsense about what goes on there. How glamorous it all was. How she had met this film star and that one. Poor Pamela became obsessed with the idea of working there, too.’

  ‘When we put our foot down, she walked out on us.’

  Good girl, I thought. At twenty-seven you deserve a little freedom and self choice. The idea of the straight-laced Palfreys putting their collective foot down together created a comic cartoon image for me and I had difficulty in suppressing a smile.

  ‘So,’ I said, after lighting up a cigarette, ‘what I think you are saying is that Pamela has left home with the idea of getting a job at Denham Studios and perhaps has gone to live with her friend, Samantha.’

  Mr Palfrey nodded firmly. ‘That was our understanding – but there are certain problems.’

  There usually are, I thought. ‘Go on.’

  ‘We thought at first that she’d come back pretty sharpish after realizing what life is like without a loving home to come back to. But she didn’t. So last week I contacted the personnel department at Denham Studios to see if they have employed a Pamela Palfrey recently and they say that they have not.’

  ‘She might have used another name.’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible. But they also told us that they don’t have anyone called Samantha on their staff either.’

  Now it’s beginning to sound like a case, I thought. ‘Have you informed the police?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ cried Freda Palfrey, her fingers flexing themselves for another riff, ‘we don’t want to get the police involved. It makes it seem like a criminal matter. That’s why we’ve come to you. At heart, she’s a good girl. We just want her home again.’

  Eric Palfrey nodded vigorously. ‘Freda would just like us to wait and pray and hope everything will be all right, but I think we must be doing something more active. I can’t just sit at home not knowing where she is and how she is. I’ve told her we must take matters into our own hands. That’s why we’ve come to you. We want you to find our daughter, Mr Hawke. We want to know that she’s safe.’

  I nodded. ‘I can try. There are no absolute guarantees in this business, as I’m sure you appreciate, but I will do my best.’

  Mrs Palfrey started to sniff and dabbed a lace handkerchief to her nose. Mr Palfrey leaned forward in a stiff manner and patted her on the shoulder in a consoling way. ‘Take heart, Mother. I am sure Mr Hawke will get to the bottom of the mystery.’

  ‘Do you have a picture of your daughter?’ I asked, interrupting this intimate moment between Mother and Father.

  ‘I thought you’d need one, so I brought two,’ Mr Palfrey replied, extracting two sepia snapshots from his wallet and passing them to me. They showed a very plain and rather podgy girl in a loose dress, wearing the same kind of owlish glasses as her father. Her hair had been curled in such a manner that it appeared to be escaping from her head. There was a strange sadness about the eyes which indicated that she knew fate had dealt her a cruel blow. She looked like a cow’s bottom and she could never demonstrate the beauty she felt inside.

  ‘They were taken last summer in our back garden. I would say that she’s lost a little weight since then,’ chipped in her mother, the sniffling done and handkerchief squirrelled away somewhere.

  ‘Apart from this Samantha, Pamela had no other friends? A boyfriend perhaps?’

  ‘Apart from Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Robert Donat, Gordon Moore and chaps of that ilk, no,’ said Mr Palfrey, in an attempt at bitter irony.

  ‘And you’
ve no idea where this Samantha lives or what she looks like?’

  The Palfreys shook their heads.

  ‘You’d better give me the address of the solicitor where she used to work. I might be able to pick up a lead there.’

  ‘I thought you’d need that,’ grinned Mr Palfrey, and once again he opened his wallet to extract a postcard with the solicitor’s name and business address copied out in neat black writing.

  I grinned back, but my heart and my lips weren’t in it. ‘Very organized, Mr Palfrey. Thank you.’

  ‘I try to be. You will also find our address and telephone number on the back of the card. I have spoken to Mr Epstein on the telephone – that’s Pamela’s old boss – but he wasn’t able to help us. He was as much in the dark as to her whereabouts as we are.’

  I nodded sympathetically. ‘I have to ask you this. Supposing I find your daughter but she doesn’t want to be found? Hard as it might be for you to contemplate, it is possible that she does not want to return the warm bosom of the family. She might be perfectly happy where she is now.’

  This stopped them in their tracks. The possibility that dear Pamela had sloughed off her parents’ restraints and lifestyle for good had not crossed their tiny, tidy minds.

  Eric Palfrey shifted awkwardly on the chair. ‘I … I am sure,’ he said, tartly, ‘that whatever dream world Pamela hoped to find out in the … big world will have proved more than disappointing – disheartening even – and she’ll be more than willing to come back to Mon Repos.’

  ‘Mon Repos?’

  ‘The name of our house.’

  I nodded. Of course. They would be the kind of people who give their little middle-class home a name to distinguish it from Dun Roamin next door or Bide A Wee over the road. Even this strike at individuality had a staleness and a predictability about it. Surely it would be a sin to return podgy Pamela to the shackles of this arid environment. I wondered if in some other office in another part of London another set of distraught parents were begging some reluctant private investigator to try and find their missing boy, a little, dark-haired chap called Peter. Somehow, I doubted it.

  ‘If you take on the case, Mr Hawke, we’d be happy to pay your fees in advance.’ Mrs Palfrey opened her handbag and tugged at a large brown envelope inside. ‘Our savings. Anything for our little girl.’

  I felt a pang of guilt for being so dismissive about their feelings, their mutual despair. It seemed that whatever passion had brought them together thirty years ago had shrivelled and all they had left in their arid little lives was their daughter. But instead of allowing her to grow and develop, they had hemmed her in, trying to fashion the girl into the creature they wanted – probably a mirror image of themselves.

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ I said, more quickly than I intended. ‘If you can give me twenty pounds to start with to cover my immediate expenses, we’ll take it from there.’

  Mrs Palfrey nodded and lowered her head. I thought she was going to start crying again. Instead she pulled out four five-pound notes from the bulging envelope and placed them on my desk.

  With as much encouragement as I could muster I bade my new clients farewell for the moment, assuring them that I’d be in touch within a few days. Left alone in my office, I felt empty somehow. I knew that solving the task they had set me would bring misery to one or possibly both parties. Not a happy prospect and not much of a job for a man to do. With a sigh I scooped up the five-pound notes and folded them into my wallet.

  six

  Peter stared at the garish poster outside the Astoria cinema. There was excitement and glamour in its gaudy colours and crude images. He ran his fingers gently over the shiny surface, stopping now and then when he reached a ripple where the paste had dried in a lump. It was a pleasing sensation. Tiger Blake and The Lost City the poster said. ‘Starring Gordon Moore’ it also said in big letters; and then underneath in smaller letters it said: ‘with Peggy Crawford, A. Bromley Davenport and Freddie Forbes. Directed by Norman Lee.’ And then in giant letters across the bottom, it screamed: ALL NEW THRILLS. The picture on the poster depicted Tiger Blake, a younger and more athletic version than the actor who played him, clinging to a jungle vine with his right hand, a large dagger in his teeth and a pretty blonde woman held in the crook of his left arm. In the background there were some ancient stone huts, which Peter thought must be part of the ‘Lost City’. It was all so wonderful.

  Peter wanted to be like Tiger Blake: brave, strong and free. And always having exciting adventures. What had been a desire to see the film when he first came upon the poster had now developed into a raging passion. He needed to see Tiger Blake and The Lost City as though his life depended upon it. But it was an ‘A’ picture and he knew they wouldn’t let him in on his own. If he went to the pay box the lady behind the glass would just turn him away. He glanced up at the frosty-faced lady ensconced in her kiosk, filing her nails. She certainly didn’t look the kind who would make any concessions to him.

  He was well aware that he was too young to see an ‘A’ by himself. He had to be accompanied by an adult. However, this shouldn’t present too much of a problem, he thought. He’d done it before. You just needed to be a little brave – like Tiger Blake.

  So Peter loitered by the entrance to the Astoria. It was early afternoon and business was slow. Of the few patrons that passed him none seemed suitable for his needs. Then he spied a potential saviour. A tall, thin, elderly man with half-moon spectacles and what Peter thought was a kind face. As the man passed him, Peter tugged at his raincoat.

  ‘’Scuse me, mister, will you take me in with you? I’ve got the money.’ He held out some coins on the palm of his grubby hand to demonstrate his veracity. The man caught off balance by this unexpected encounter, looked bewildered.

  ‘I just want to see Tiger Blake,’ said Peter, earnestly, his eyes pleading. ‘Please.’

  The man smiled and nodded. ‘So do I. All right, give me your money then.’

  Peter passed over the coins and accompanied the man to the kiosk.

  ‘One and a half stalls, please.’

  The bored woman in the kiosk passed over the tickets without a glance at the boy.

  Within moments Peter was in the darkened auditorium where a flickering shaft of light from the projector caught numerous trails of cigarette smoke as they floated up towards the ornate ceiling. On screen Laurel and Hardy were trying to push a piano up a long flight of steps. The soundtrack was noisy and shrill.

  ‘Thanks, mister,’ Peter whispered to the man who had acted as his passport to this make-believe world and then he hared off down the aisle.

  Peter sat three rows from the front where, to his delight, the screen almost enveloped him. He scrunched down in his seat with his knees pressed up against the one in front. He was in heaven. He didn’t care much for Laurel and Hardy. He thought they were too slow to be funny. He much preferred The Three Stooges with all the silly noises when they hit each other – which they did a lot. But he was content to watch Laurel and Hardy for the moment for he knew that before long he would be accompanying Tiger Blake in search of The Lost City.

  After Laurel and Hardy had completed their task with the usual disastrous results, the lights came up and there was an interval. Peter resisted the temptation to buy an ice cream. He realized that he had to watch his money very carefully and one luxury in a day was enough. He wished now that he’d taken the other pound note from that one-eyed bloke’s wallet.

  Eventually the lights dimmed and with a gentle rattle the curtains swept back to reveal the screen again. To the accompaniment of dramatic native drumbeats the titles appeared: ‘Gordon Moore as Tiger Blake in Tiger Blake and The Lost City.’

  In the warm dark, Peter slowly left reality behind. There were no more thoughts of his mother, of cold doorways, wet beds and the bleak unfathomable future; he was in the steamy African jungle on safari with his hero, in search of German spies who had stolen some secret plans. He was happy.

  seven


  I met up with David Llewellyn, my tame Scotland Yard chum, for a lunchtime drink in The Guardsman, a cosy pub not a dart’s throw away from the Yard itself.

  I’d been involved in a murder investigation before the war when David had been the officer in charge. Despite the difference in our ranks – I was a mere police constable then – we had hit it off and formed a friendship which survived the vagaries of my career. If the truth be known, we had little in common apart from liking a drink and a passion for detective work, but that was sufficient in these ragged times to maintain a friendship. I knew I could always rely on David if I needed a bit of official help with an investigation.

  ‘What is it this time?’ he asked, after downing a third of his pint in one gulp. Before I could reply, he wagged a finger at me. ‘Now don’t deny it. You want something from me. You never invite me out for a pint unless I can be of service to the great detective.’

  ‘It’s a reciprocal process,’ I grinned.

  ‘Hey, don’t you use such big words with me. I’m just a simple lad from the valleys with only a school certificate to my name.’

  ‘You get a pint and I get some information.’

  ‘Just one pint, is it?

  ‘Maybe two. Depends on how co-operative you are.’

  He grinned. ‘That’s better. OK, old son, what’s the pitch?’

  I told David all about my encounter with the boy Peter.

  ‘The poor bugger,’ he said, when I’d finished. ‘Sadly it’s not a unique case. The truth is that there’s a lot of young ’uns living rough these days. What with the little devils orphaned by the bombing … and then there are those who do a bunk because they don’t want to be evacuated. It’s a shitty old world if you’re a youngster at present.’