by Hunter Alan
He’d dated Gently for the evening, but now they’d have to fill in with some blasted routine . . .
‘You coming to Headquarters?’
‘Yes. I’ve calls to make.’
‘Drive you there. I’ve got to look in.’
So, in the estate-wagon, to HQ, where he frowned and sweated as he talked to the Yard; the stink of that cigar still in his nostrils, and a thick head beginning to develop.
Well . . . he was only there for forty-eight hours . . . just shouldering the Yard’s public image for it!
‘I’ve put them on finding the blonde for us . . . she’ll probably know who those initials refer to. Though whether she’ll talk . . . also Cheyne-Chevington. That’s a shot in the dark. And a query about Groton.’
‘Do you think he has form, chief ?’
‘I’m sure he hasn’t. Or we’d have shunted him back to SA. But the Foreign Office might know something, like what he was doing in 53.’
‘If he was in Kenya along with Shimpling—’
‘Come on. We’ll talk to the man himself.’
Groton’s farmhouse was at the end of a lane joining a major road from Abbotsham to Hawkshill. The road ran westward and left the town by a steep incline crested with trees.
They drove for ten minutes. At the top of the lane appeared a notice board painted in red and white. It read:
HUGH GROTON
ZOOLOGICAL SUPPLIER
It Is Dangerous To Trespass Here
KEEP OUT!
They drove down the lane, which ran straight and ended in a pair of gates made from steel tube. Perkins, who was driving, sent Gipping to open them, then drove through into a gravelled yard.
‘Does Groton live here alone?’ Gently asked.
‘As far as we know,’ Perkins said. ‘I wouldn’t like to vouch for who he brings out here. I’m told he goes after the women.’
‘What about staff ?’
‘A couple of farm-workers. A wife of one of them sees to the house for him.’
‘Where do they live?’
‘They come from Hawkshill. They cycle in each day.’
The yard was bounded by the brick wall of an outbuilding by which grew nettles and a big elder. To its left, through a small metal gate which stood open, a path ran to the door of the straw-thatched farmhouse.
The door stood open also. A man came out.
‘That’s Groton . . .’ Perkins muttered.
Groton had seen the car and was coming towards it, carrying a double-barrelled shotgun under his arm. On recognizing the identity of the car he stopped, then came on again, the gun held slacker.
‘So it’s you lot again!’
Gently had never before seen a man so massive. Groton stood six feet two or three and had the chest and shoulders of a gorilla.
An immense man! He wore an army shirt and jodhpurs tucked into vast bush-boots. The weight of him made the gravel crunch loudly, you almost expected to feel the ground tremble.
‘Why didn’t you give me a ring? You know how I feel about visitors.’
Above a bull-neck was set a black-maned head and a broad-featured face with huge cheekbones.
‘One day I’ll put a stockade round the place.’
Deep-set grey eyes, a hooked nose, a vast jaw.
‘I’ll buy a consignment of prickly pear, that’ll put a stop to you. What do you want?’
Gently got out. For once in his life he was feeling physically insignificant. His hefty six feet, alongside Groton, diminished to the scale of lightweight humanity.
That gun, for instance, in Groton’s paws . . . it looked about the size of a gaming pistol!
‘You’re Groton?’
‘Who the devil else?’
‘I’m Chief Superintendent Gently, Central Office.’
‘So what do I do – throw a fit?’
‘I want to have a look at that truck you use.’
They stared at each other. Perhaps it was the high cheekbones that made Groton’s grey eyes so narrow. There were streaks of white in his black hair but it shone with a liberal dressing of oil.
Then he laughed, a yokellish guffaw.
‘Right you are, Mr Chief Superintendent. If you want to see the truck, you can. Just watch out you don’t finish up inside it.’
Was it a threat or a jest? The grey eyes glittered at Gently a moment longer. Then Groton laughed again and swung away, pounding across the gravel with grinding boots.
They followed. He led them round the outbuilding into what had previously been a cattle-yard, a drained rectangle of concrete enclosed by byres with halved doors.
From the byres came scufflings and yelpings and a faint, straw-like smell of animals, and in a dark doorway closed with steel mesh a striped face appeared suddenly, then vanished.
‘Feeling nervous?’ Groton leered. ‘There’re some funny customers round here. Wolves. Lynxes. A mountain leo. It doesn’t take a big cat to wipe your face off.’
‘Don’t you get nervous?’ Gently asked.
Groton bellowed his laughter. ‘You’re a comic,’ he said. ‘I’m a cat-man, you read me? I’ve got what it takes. I can stroke a tigger, and he’ll purr.
‘There’s ’phant-men and snake-men, and I’ve met one who could charm rhinos. But I’m a cat-man, feller. They go with me. We’re pals.’
‘And cats are all you deal in?’ Gently said.
‘Nope. I didn’t say that.’
Groton halted, made a sweeping motion with the hand that held the gun.
‘What do you want? A pair of zees? I can sell you a couple for twelve-fifty. A couple of zees look good strutting around in your paddock.
‘Or how about some roos – you can talk roos to your pals for hours. Or maybe a brace of spider-monkeys. If you’ve a hot-house, that is.’
‘How much would a tiger cost?’
‘Tiggers are for millionaires, feller. Do you know what it costs to run a tigger? Around fifty a week, over a period. You come across the three H’s – that’s heat, horse-meat and hired hands. Then there’s insurance, overheads and vets. You won’t see change out of fifty.’
‘But how much would one cost?’
Groton frowned.
‘Say three thou. That’s what I was going to ask for the tigger they shot last year.’
‘Who was your customer?’
‘Patsy Morris. He’s the Canadian lumber-king, you know? He’s got a ranch and a private zoo in Perthshire. I’ve sold him leos and some big monks.’
‘Where else could you sell one?’
‘You tell me. I’ve only sold one tigger in five years.’
Groton strode on.
They entered a compound with an open-sided machinery shed adjoining it. In the shed stood a Vauxhall estate car and a closed truck painted dark green. The truck had very small windows of reinforced glass set behind grids of slim bars and beneath the windows, stencilled in red, the legend:
WILD ANIMALS – KEEP AWAY!
Groton waved to it.
‘Take a good look. I invented the loading gear myself.’
‘How long have you had this truck?’
‘Since I started in business. They’re damned expensive things to buy.’
Gently went in, walked round the truck. At the rear it was closed by a tailboard and two doors. Both tailboard and doors were fitted to pintles from which they simply slid or lifted off. The pintles stood proud by about two inches from the framing of the walls and floor.
‘Dutt . . .’
‘Yes, chief.’
Dutt pulled out a rule and began to take measurements. Groton came and leaned against a timber support, watching, whistling through his teeth.
‘What’s the arrangement behind the doors?’ Gently asked.
‘I’ll show you when sonny has finished fooling.’
Dutt scribbled down figures, then nodded to Gently.
‘Right,’ Gently said.
Groton opened the doors and dropped the tailboard, revealing a heavy diamond grille. T
he grille descended into a slot in the steel floor of the truck where it was retained by four bolts. The truck wails were lined with corrugated steel and the floor was stainless steel with a diamond tread. The windows were also barred inside and there was a window looking into the cab.
Groton clouted the grille with his fist.
‘Take a look at that . . . patents pending.’
‘The doors and the tailboard – are they strictly necessary?’
Groton guffawed. ‘Not for keeping in the livestock! But they need to be warm and out of draughts – there’s heat laid on from the engine. And people don’t like tiggers staring at them. Makes them nervous, you know?’
‘How do you raise and lower the grille?’
‘Remote control from the cab.’
‘How would you load a tiger in there?’
‘Now you’re asking for trade secrets.’
Groton took out a cigar, bit the end off it. He blew a tornado of smoke at Gently and rubbed the match to fragments between thumb and finger.
‘I know the idea you’re getting, feller. Someone used the truck to pinch the tigger. But it’s not on. You know why? They couldn’t load it, for a start.’
‘Somehow it got to the other side of town.’
‘That’s no distance for a tigger.’
‘Nobody saw it on the way there.’
‘It would have gone round, through the fields.’
‘But why did it go where it went?’
Groton shook his head, made the cigar crackle.
‘You don’t know tiggers. They’re curious beasts. They don’t quite figure like the other ’mals.
‘A tigger’s got brains. Not brains like us, but a darned sight more than a leo. You know pretty well how a leo will act, but it’s fatal to guess about a tigger.
‘You just keep watching them, that’s all. If you try to out-think them – feller, you’re dead!’
‘Still, it would be six miles to that bungalow.’
‘A tigger could do it in fifteen minutes.’
‘Who else drives the truck besides you?’
‘Nobody. The hired hands don’t drive.’
‘And nobody but you could load the tiger?’
Groton blew a lot more smoke.
‘Look, feller,’ he said. ‘I’ve people to vouch for me. I wasn’t there when the tigger went.
‘I was in town. Don’t say you haven’t checked me. I never stirred out of the Club. We had a committee from seven thirty and then supper and then a booze.
‘I went to bed about one a.m. and I shared a room with another member. The keys of this truck were in my pocket – it never shifted out of the compound.’
‘Can tigers open doors?’ Gently said.
‘To hell with tiggers and doors!’
‘This one must have opened a door. Then locked it again when it left.’
Groton glared at Gently, his huge hands clenching. He had the cigar between his teeth.
Beside him, looking unusually diminutive, Dutt stood under-scoring figures in his notebook.
‘That tiger left here in the truck,’ Gently said. ‘There’s no doubt about that. The truck was driven to the bungalow and backed up to it and then the tiger released.
‘If nobody else could load the tiger there’s only one other alternative. You left it ready loaded for someone before you went to London.’
‘Did I hell!’
‘Then what happened?’
‘How should I know what happened?’
‘It’s the other way round, Mr Groton. How could you not know what happened?’
Groton was sweating. A film gleamed on the creased skin of his brow, dark patches were showing beneath the arms of the khaki shirt.
It was too easy . . .
Gently glanced at Perkins, standing unhappy-faced to his right. Probably he was cursing himself for not having a go before the Yard men were called in . . .
‘I’ve seen the statement you made at that time. You say you left the farm at six p.m. That was after your employees left to cycle home to Hawkshill.’
‘I didn’t load up that tigger.’
‘But nobody else could have done, you tell me.’
‘They could if they knew how.’
‘You mean, if you’d given them instruction?’
‘No!’
Groton threw down the cigar and rasped it to shreds under his boot.
‘All right, I was shooting a line about that. It only takes savvy to figure it out.
‘You dump some horse-meat in the truck and back the truck up to the cage. The cage has a porch with a ramp at the same level as the floor of the truck. Then you open the cage doors – they slide – and raise the grille from the cab.
‘When tigger comes in you drop the grille, and that’s it. Tigger’s loaded.’
‘Sounds simple,’ Gently said.
‘Didn’t I say I was shooting a line?’
‘All it needs is someone who knew about the truck and about you being away, and who had some horse-meat.’
‘I can’t help what it needed!’
‘You don’t like to tell us who it was?’
Groton dragged his fingers through his black mane.
‘Feller,’ he said, ‘don’t push me like that.’
But his big face had a greyish look and his eyes were pulling away from Gently. Sweat was trickling through the dark hairs of his chest which showed through the unbuttoned shirt.
He knew. He must know.
At least, he must have a suspicion!
Somebody familiar with the farm, who’d hung about there, watched animals handled . . .
‘What were you doing before you came over here?’
Back in the old cattle-yard something set up a howl.
‘I was a pro, what do you think? A hunter. Never been anything else.’
‘Where, exactly . . . ?’
‘All over. Up in ’Yika for a long while.’
‘In Kenya?’
‘Who said Kenya?’
‘Tanganyika is next door to it.’
Groton hesitated. ‘So what?’ he said. ‘I’ve been all over. Kenya too.’
‘Were you there in 1953?’
Another pause. ‘Could have been.’
‘Was it safe for hunting just then?’
‘As safe as it ever is with greenhorns!’
‘There was Mau-Mau trouble,’ Gently said. ‘It was big news. It brought the pressmen.’
‘I’m a hunter, I wasn’t news.’
‘It brought Peter Shimpling.’
‘He should have stayed there.’
Gently felt in his pocket, drew out an envelope. Groton watched him with slitted eyes. Gently took three photographs from the envelope and handed them to Groton.
‘Do you know these people?’
Groton barely glanced at the photographs.
‘Never met them in my life.’
‘I suggest you take a good look at them.’
‘How is that going to help?’
But he lowered his eyes to look at the photographs, as though doing his best to identify them. They were press pictures of Dr Cheyne-Chevington, Shimpling and Shirley Banks.
Shimpling here looked very respectable. He wore a bowler and carried an umbrella. Cheyne-Chevington was scowling as he got into a car. Shirley Banks had posed brassily for the cameraman.
‘What about this one with the little moustache . . . ?’
‘Aren’t I telling you? I don’t know them.’
‘Give him a topee with a press pass stuck in it . . . sunglasses . . . a linen jacket . . .’
‘No!’
‘You never met him?’
‘If I did I don’t remember.’
‘Kenya . . . 1953 . . . ?’
‘Who says I did?’
‘Did you?’
‘No!’
‘It’s Shimpling, of course,’ Gently said. ‘I think you must have run across him. He was living here for eighteen months. He’d perhaps want to chat about
Kenya . . .’
Groton shoved the photographs back at Gently.
‘Look, I’ve had enough of this palava! If you’ve nothing better to do, get to hell off my farm.’
Gently nodded.
‘I’ll want to talk to your men.’
‘Then ruddy talk to them – and get out!’
Gently nodded again, didn’t say anything.
Groton snatched up his gun and slammed away across the compound.
Perkins came forward.
‘May I see those photographs . . . ?’
Dutt was closing his notebook and grinning.
Where Groton had gone there was a sudden scuffling and snarling, then a chilling, high-pitched whine.
Perkins said: ‘This fellow here, just getting into the car . . .’
He made his face of misery.
‘I think I know him,’ he said.
CHAPTER FIVE
BUT THEY GOT little out of the two countrymen who assisted Groton with his animals. They were elderly men who probably found mucking-out cages an easier task than hedging and ditching.
‘Don’t ask us how that varmint got out . . . we never had a lot to do with him. Mr Groton, he sees to the big ’uns. You wouldn’t catch us going in there like he do . . .’
Two easy-going men with placid eyes, strangely similar in feature, reflecting, as though they were mirrors, the sunny fields to which they belonged. Jimma Cook and Harbut Reeves. Growing old with the greenness of country things.
‘Do you remember when you left that night?’
Gently had found them wheeling in litter. Now they stood around in the shade of an elder tree from which the sun drew a pungent odour.
‘Ha’past five is our time, less there’s anything want doing. Mr Groton’s a turn nut but he isn’t a bad man to work for.’
‘Did anything special happen that day?’
‘I don’t recall . . . what do you say, Jimma?’
‘Not unless he was fussin’ a bit about getting away to his meeting.’
‘How was he fussing?’
‘Well, you know. He was a bit niggly to get them all fed.’
‘Who fed the tiger?’
‘Blast, we didn’t. We never liked getting too close to that.’
‘Was the tiger fed that day?’
‘I s’pose it was . . . don’t you, Harbut?’
‘He fed it in the morning, I know. I watched him. I was kept too busy in the afternune . . .’
What shone through it all, unexpectedly, was a sort of affection for Groton; he was just the biggest and most intriguing of the animals on the farm. With them, he might have dropped from another planet, so inconceivable was his origin. Jimma and Harbut viewed him uncritically – a rum nut, but not necessarily a bad ’un.
