‘I leak all over,’ agreed Davies dreamily.
‘Ah, you’re a strong, tough man, I’ll give you that,’ said Father Harvey. ‘I thought we would be preparing for your wake. Even on the canal bank I got to wondering what religion you pursued. I didn’t know, but I gave you the last rites just in case. One thing about us men of God, we know our rites.’
Davies attempted a smile. ‘It would have been more to the point if you’d tried the kiss of life,’ he remarked.
‘Every man to his calling,’ replied the priest, unruffled. ‘It’s fine to see you’re still with us on this side, anyway. I wouldn’t guarantee you much of a future over there, beyond, you know. Not being a policeman.’
‘If it wasn’t for you happening to be out swimming at that time of night I would be most certainly beyond,’ said Davies. He moved his hand gratefully towards the priest who, glancing privily around the ward first, patted it with his own.
‘A very nasty business,’ said Father Harvey. ‘I suppose the police force must be combing the area, whatever that may mean.’
‘They’ll hardly think to give it a scratch,’ said Davies with certainty. ‘An attack on a copper – particularly this copper – is nothing special. The Inspector, Yardbird, probably had a good laugh and asked the lads to watch for anything suspicious on their way home from work.’
‘Charity rarely begins at home,’ agreed the priest. ‘Do you know who might have done it?’
‘I’ve got a fair idea,’ said Davies, a light coming from his reduced eyes. ‘All I have to do is find them … him.’
‘It’s a wonder they didn’t crack your skull even before drowning you. It must be even thicker than I thought.’
Davies tried a bigger smile but it hurt him all over his face. ‘One of my copper colleagues tells me the bin came from the Indian Restaurant,’ he said. ‘It had a lining of dried curry. Tough stuff that curry, especially from that dump. It saved my life.’ He regarded Father Harvey through his bruises and stitches. ‘You’re a good bloke,’ he said genuinely. ‘Thanks. When I’ve got this lot over with I’ll find out who burned down your confessional box.’
‘I’m thinking of building a temporary structure,’ the priest told him. ‘There’s a nasty backlog of unforgiven sins piling up, and my superiors are not being very sympathetic, nor is the insurance company. If you happen to know of any reasonable wood lying around that I might make some use of perhaps you’ll tell me. I saw some very decent planks in the yard of Swindell’s the undertakers, but I’m not sure that would morally be quite correct. Sitting there tight surrounded by the best cedar would make me feel uncomfortable. I’ll be long enough in my coffin when I truly get there.’
‘Better than being scuttled in a refuse bin,’ said Davies. ‘Did you run up any expenses, by the way? You know, with your clothes being waterlogged and everything?’
The priest shook his head. ‘My underwear was dry by the morning. I put it over the church boiler. The only charge will be for the dry cleaning of my clerical gown which I threw off before throwing myself into the canal. Unfortunately I tossed it into a particularly filthy puddle. I’ll send you the bill. At the cleaners they always charge it as a maxi-coat.’
Mrs Fulljames and Doris came through the door of the ward and stood there in plastic truculence; one pink and one sky blue crinkly and crackly raincoat with transparent overshoes of the same synthetic material tied about their ankles, imprisoning their feet like specimens. They remained stiffly at the door, the raindrops dripping from their gulleys and gutters like melting ice. They examined Davies at that distance, squinting their eyes and screwing up their faces, backing their heads away, as though trying to get a true perspective of his injuries. He sat taut and propped in bed, wondering why they had come.
‘Fine bloody mess you look,’ snorted Mrs Fulljames from the door.
‘Yes, a fine mess,’ confirmed Doris loyally.
Davies believed he heard Mrs Fulljames snap her fingers and the two plastic dragons advanced on him, their scales creaking as they strode. But he was spared. A voice croaked at the distant end of the room and caught his landlady’s attention. ‘Oh, just look, Doris,’ she said in a pleased way. ‘There’s that polite Mr Wellington, who used to be our milkman.’
‘So it is. Mr Wellington,’ agreed Doris. When she smiled Davies sometimes thought he caught a distant glimpse of her youth. But it was soon gone. ‘Wonder why he’s in?’
‘Let’s go and see the poor soul,’ said Mrs Fulljames. She wheeled stiffly, luffing like a sea-soaked sailing barge and made for the extreme end of the ward. Doris, with not so much as a splintered glance at her husband, followed obediently. They waved wet waves to Mr Wellington as they went. Davies astonished himself by experiencing a touch of jealousy. He eased himself up in his bed and saw the milkman sitting up in real excitement and anticipation.
It was almost ten minutes before they returned. ‘Such an interesting man, that,’ chuffed Mrs Fulljames, as though that was an entire and acceptable excuse for their divergence. ‘He’s so polite, isn’t he Doris? And he’s been everywhere.’
‘Milkmen usually have,’ observed Davies painfully.
Doris stared at her husband’s dented and stitched countenance. ‘He’s eaten your Smarties,’ she said bluntly, as though wanting to get it over with. ‘I brought you some Smarties, but Mr Wellington’s had them.’
Once more Davies felt illogically hurt. He scowled and the pain told him not to do it again. ‘Thanks for bringing them anyway,’ he muttered. ‘It’s the thought, really, I suppose.’
‘Of course it is!’ interpolated Mrs Fulljames extravagantly. She hovered across his sheets now as though enjoyably anticipating performing an operation on him.
‘And he’s so interesting,’ echoed Doris, still with a hint of guilt. ‘He’s done so many things.’
‘He’s eaten my fucking Smarties for a start,’ grumbled Davies bitterly.
Mrs Fulljames held up a restraining arm like a point-duty policeman. Some rain, as if retained by capillary action in the creases of her pink plastic sleeve, now drizzled onto his sheet. ‘We will send some more,’ she said in her final way. ‘So stop being a misery. You don’t look as though you could manage a Smartie anyway.’
‘I expect they feed you by tubes, don’t they?’ agreed Doris. ‘You’d never get a Smartie down a tube.’
‘Anyway, you know what you did, don’t you?’ asked Mrs Fulljames.
‘I gather,’ said Davies wearily, ‘that I got a dustbin put over my head, was then bashed about something fearful and finally knocked in the canal.’
‘You also left the front door open,’ said Doris frostily. ‘Your key was in it.’
‘Oh?’
‘And somebody walked in and stole the hallstand,’ Mrs Fulljames finished it for her, perhaps afraid Doris might not achieve the right emphasis. ‘My antique hallstand.’
‘Antique?’ queried Davies. ‘That object was antique?’
‘It belonged to Mr Fulljames,’ muttered Doris, indicating that was a mark of authenticity. ‘The late Mr Fulljames.’
‘Perhaps that Persian bloke – the one who nicked the bed – has been on the prowl again,’ suggested Davies dismally.
‘You’re being frivolous,’ said Mrs Fulljames haughtily. ‘I’ll bet you’re laughing all over your face behind that mess. Anyway we didn’t come here to argue. How long will you be in?’
‘Christ knows. The embroidery class is coming back tomorrow. I reckon they’re going to try and keep me as a demonstration model or something.’
‘How long?’ insisted Doris. ‘Tell Mrs Fulljames.’
‘I don’t know!’ He managed that most difficult of all vocal achievements, a quiet shout.
‘Do you want your room kept? That’s the point.’
Davies was horrified. ‘My room? You wouldn’t let my room?’
‘It’s economics, Mr Davies. That’s how we have to live. Surely even you know that.’
‘Jesus wept. Don�
��t let it. I’ll keep paying.’
‘In that case, all right,’ sniffed Mrs Fulljames, indicating a load had been taken off her mind. ‘We’ll discuss the hallstand at some other time. I don’t feel up to it now.’
‘Nor me,’ muttered Davies trying to slide under the sheet.
She produced a newspaper from her plastic folds. ‘I brought you this,’ she said as though they had reached a truce. ‘Evening News. Last night’s. But in here it makes no difference, I suppose.’
‘None at all,’ he agreed defeatedly. ‘The world hardly exists.’
They backed towards the door. Then Doris unexpectedly gave a little birdlike dart forward and kissed him on his sore cheek. A final minor cascade of trapped rain escaped from her hat onto his face. ‘Bye, then,’ she said, then anxiously: ‘You’ve, you’ve got your insurances all paid up, haven’t you?’
Mod Lewis came through the door like a felon. ‘I’m not all that keen on this place,’ he explained on tip-toe when he reached the foot of Davies’s bed. ‘I was a porter here once, you know, during a crime wave. Someone kept stealing the patients’ false teeth. By night, see.’
He rolled his eyes melodramatically. ‘Everybody was suspect, boy. Even the consultant surgeons. Everybody got left with a nasty taste in their mouths. Especially the patients.’ He advanced around the side of the bed to Davies, as though his experience as a porter had given him some professional knowledge. ‘Aye, that’s better,’ he said, surveying the swollen face approvingly. ‘Nice job they’ve done there, those sutures. It’ll all go back in place eventually. It’s subsided even now.’
‘You’ve been in to see me before?’
‘Oh yes, man. Course I have. The first morning, as soon as I heard. It was a good excuse for not going to the library. But you looked very poorly, Dangerous. Never saw a face like it. Your head was all swelled up. Reminded me of the old globe of the world we had at school. That was knocked about too. I sat with you for an hour or more. You were right out and since I had nobody to talk to I amused myself by tracing the major rivers, sea and air routes on your face – and the railways, of course, most interesting.’
‘That’s one thing about me, I’m never boring,’ said Davies. ‘Do you think you could get a message to a young woman for me.’
‘Josie,’ said Mod confidently. ‘She’s coming in tonight. She read it in the local paper and she came into The Babe In Arms. Nice little girl. Bit skinny. Bit young for you. She wanted to come this morning but I said I’d come first. Just to see you were passable.’
‘Am I?’
‘Passable,’ nodded Mod, but with some doubt. ‘You’re sort of going down from when I last viewed you. Who did it?’
‘Ramscar, his lot. It must have been,’ said Davies quietly. ‘Out to kill me, I suppose.’
‘Davus sum non Oedipus,’ quoted Mod looking at him glumly. ‘Publius Terence, Roman poet.’
‘What’s it mean?’ asked Davies.
‘I am a simple man, no solver of riddles,’ obliged Mod. ‘I read it yesterday and I thought how fitting it was.’
He had been standing but now he pulled the small visitor’s chair confidently to the bedside. ‘But you must be standing on somebody’s toes, that’s for certain,’ he said.
‘In my blundering sort of way,’ agreed Davies.
‘Ever thought that’s maybe why you were put onto the Ramscar business in the very beginning?’ suggested Mod. ‘Maybe they didn’t want anybody who’d be too … well … subtle.’
‘Everybody who comes in here is so kind,’ sighed Davies. ‘Is anybody feeding my dog?’
‘Mr Smeeton, The Complete Home Entertainer,’ Mod told him. ‘I tried to feed the foul thing but it bit me. So I sent Mr Smeeton. He went along in his dog outfit, on the way to one of his performances. He says he is coming to see you.’
‘Not in one of his costumes, I hope.’
‘Probably,’ said Mod. ‘He said he’d come by on the way to work. So you know what that means. One of his extravaganzas.’
‘I can’t wait.’
A silence dropped between them for a moment, as it does at hospital bedsides. Mod wanted to say something. ‘You’ve heard about the hallstand being nicked, I suppose,’ he said eventually. Davies sensed that he had intended to say something else.
‘They came in, you know,’ he replied. ‘Mrs Fulljames and Doris. It was terrifying. She even gave my Smarties away.’ He looked at Mod through his bruises. ‘What else was it you were going to say?’
‘Well, nothing really. I was just wondering … not prying into your business as a police detective or anything. I was just wondering how it was going. The Celia thing.’
Davies had spent his prostrate hours going through it all portion by portion. ‘I keep turning up stones, and finding wiggly things underneath. Very odd things some of them too. Very nasty, some. But they don’t seem to have any connection. A couple of hours before I was duffed up I thought I’d found a good lead, something that’s been reeking for years and, sure enough, out it came.’
Mod continued thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps, begging your pardon, Dangerous, perhaps blundering about like you’re apt to do, you’ve stirred up more than one dirty pond.’
‘Listen Mod,’ Davies said. ‘When I feel more up to it, I’ll tell you what I’ve found so far. It’s a lot, but it’s nothing, if you see what I mean. You might be able to see something that I can’t.’
The Welshman nodded. ‘That’s more than probable,’ he accepted. ‘In the meantime, I’ve done something on your behalf. I thought while you was stuck in here I’d take over on the case of Celia Norris for a few days.’
‘And what?’
‘Oh, I’ve done nothing really. Nothing at all. And I don’t want to interfere, if you understand me, casting aspersions or anything. But I did notice something. I’m not going to tell you what it is because it would be putting ideas into your head – and at this stage they might not be the right ideas. They certainly wouldn’t be very welcome ideas, take it for gospel. I’ll point you in the right direction and then you’ll have to make the same conclusions yourself.’
Davies stared at him. ‘All right. What is it for God’s sake?’
‘I’ve just looked up the account of the Norris murder in the files of the local paper, in the Citizen. I take it you’ve done that?’
‘One of the first things,’ confirmed Davies. ‘The press cuttings are all in the dossier. I read that right through.’
Mod got to his feet. ‘Well, when you get out of here go and take another look – in the files. See if you can see what I think I saw. All right?’
‘Can’t you tell me now? Come on Mod. You’re supposed to be my pal.’
‘Thank you, but no. Have a look yourself. I’m not being the cause of any unpleasantness. Good-bye Dangerous. Hope you’re better when I come in next time.’
‘Rotten bastard,’ muttered Davies. But Mod just laughed and went out.
Mr Smeeton, The Complete Home Entertainer, materialised at the ward door that evening, as Mod had forecast, his feet hoofed, his chest chestnut and a life-sized horse’s head tucked beneath his arm.
‘I’ve taken on a partner,’ he confidingly said as he came across the floor. Visitors’ conversation in the ward stopped. ‘I’ve left him outside. He’s the back-end.’
‘Where else?’ agreed Davies. ‘Nice to see you’re branching out. Taking on staff. You’ll have to be a bit careful, though, won’t you, about who you employ for the arse. It seems to me that could be a bit risky.’
‘It’s a clean show,’ said Mr Smeeton primly. ‘And I employ only clean people.’ He put the horse’s head down on its ear on the bed. It grinned at Davies glassily. Mr Smeeton carefully examined him. ‘Nasty,’ he breathed eventually. ‘Very nasty. I knew a bloke in a knife throwing act who went off with his partner’s wife. I remember going to the hospital. He looked just like you.’
‘I do an act with a dustbin,’ said Davies. ‘Followed by a spectacular dive into icy water
.’
‘So I understand,’ said the entertainer morosely. ‘And you left the front door open and the hallstand was stolen. We’ve had nothing but moans about that around the table ever since you’ve been in here. She’s a hard woman that Mrs Fulljames. She would never make the grade as a theatrical landlady. No kindness in her. Somehow I can’t see her lifting a midget up to the lavatory chain.’
The face ached as Davies grinned. He adjusted it again. ‘No, somehow Mrs Fulljames doesn’t fit that picture,’ he agreed. ‘Thank you for feeding Kitty, by the way.’
‘Glad to help,’ said Mr Smeeton kindly. He stamped his hooves on the floor. They sounded real. People looked up again. ‘I’ll have to be going. Our show begins at eight. I hope you’re out soon.’ He picked up his horse’s head from the blanket and swivelled one of its eyes. ‘See you then. Toodle pip.’
As he reached the door, the head wedged awkwardly under his arm, Josie walked in. Her small face looked very pinched. Her stride was jerky. ‘I suppose he’d been to see you,’ she guessed. ‘Him with the horse’s head.’
‘Right,’ nodded Davies. ‘They keep trying to make me laugh.’
She looked at his face. Then she sat down heavily on the little chair, took both his hands in hers and began to cry on them.
Ten
As it was Sunday evening it had begun to rain. The Salvation Army band formed their circle, their small Stonehenge of faith, outside their Citadel and, turning their blue backs on the rest of the town and the world, began to play inwardly.
It was the wrong season for it to be anything much more than a private gathering. In the summer they often had people in the dry street, loitering, offering advice or ribaldry, while they sang their songs of love. There was, at that season, a man who contrived to do a Cockney soft-shoe shuffle to their tunes. But now, in the dumb autumn dusk, there were only two outside the circle who took any notice of their burly playing or heard the hope in the words they proclaimed.
The first man was always there, at any time or term, an active simpleton who enjoyed conducting the band behind the true conductor’s back. He had followed every sweep of the hands and arms for years and, in truth, performed them faithfully and well. This shadow had also acquired a Salvation Army cap from an Army Surplus Store and it gave his corded face a certain peak of religious authority. Sunday night was the gladdest night of the week for him, not because he heard and accepted their salvation, but because it was the only night of the week when he was not alone. The other witness was Dangerous Davies.
The Complete Dangerous Davies Page 12
