‘Not generally,’ acknowledged Davies. He walked in. Even through his mask of dressings he could smell a greenhouse damp. He went into the front room where a table was covered with newspaper, flower pots, plants and scattered compost.
‘Taking cuttings,’ explained Mr Tilth. ‘Messy job.’
Davies glanced around as he was guided towards a chair at the table. A large clothes-horse hung with towels had been awkwardly placed in the corner of the room, strategically, but not so strategically that it completely concealed the fronds of a palm tree coyly curling over its edge. Davies sat down. ‘Mr Tilth,’ he said firmly. ‘This visit is unconnected with any dealings you may have had with the police previously. I want to assure you of that.’ He hesitated then rephrased it. ‘No, that’s not strictly true. It is to do with that.’ He watched the consternation cram into the man’s face. ‘But not in the way you think. I want your help.’
‘Well, what is it, Mr Davies?’ asked Mr Tilth, still not convinced.
‘Your allotment. The one by the canal.’
‘As was,’ said Mr Tilth. ‘It’s not mine any more. Like I said in court, the Council took it away from me. After all those years of work.’
‘Yes, it’s the years I’m interested in. Your ownership went back to nineteen fifty-one, didn’t it? Before that even.’
‘Back to the nineteen forties,’ asserted the man, a glimmer of pride rising in his eyes. ‘In the dark days of nineteen-forty, when Britain stood alone. And it was my old father’s before that. Like I told them in court, it’s been our ’eritage, that allotment.’
‘You remember when the wartime blockhouse was built along the bottom, by the canal.’
‘Blimey, I’ll say. We had our nursery bed there and they came and built that bloody thing. I had a real row with the Home Guard captain or whatever he was. Told him, I did, that I was doing more for the war-effort than him and his tin bleeding soldiers. And he tried to tell me that it was there to defend my sprouts and my spuds from the Germans. Load of horse-shit.’
Davies let him finish. ‘When was it knocked down?’ he asked.
‘Oh, a couple of years after the war,’ considered the man. ‘About forty-seven, forty-eight, I’d say.’
Davies felt his hopes sigh as they deflated. ‘Not later. Not nineteen fifty-one?’
‘No. Definitely not. My dad died in forty-nine and it was gone then. I remember I was annoyed when they knocked it down in the end because it was useful for keeping tools and that. But it was gone in forty-nine because I remember putting up the garden shed what we built and the cold frames we had. I remember putting them on the base of the thing, the concrete foundation.’
‘Oh, what a pity,’ muttered Davies.
The man regarded him, for the first time, with some measure of curiosity. He sniffed thoughtfully. ‘And that was in forty-nine,’ he repeated. ‘Definitely.’
Davies rose wearily. His face was beginning to ache. The soreness below the bandages was making him shudder. ‘Right then,’ he said. ‘It was just an idea I had that’s all.’
‘It must have been an important idea, Mr Davies, for you to come around here in that state.’ He glanced apprehensively towards the corner where the palm, like a disobedient child, was poking its head around the clothes horse meant to be concealing it. ‘It wasn’t for nothing else, then, was it?’
‘No, no,’ Davies assured him. ‘Nothing else.’ He went to the front door. He wondered why the man had not asked him to go into the kitchen since the front room had proved such an embarrassment. Perhaps the kitchen would have been even more so.
At the front door they lingered for a moment. The night air felt cold coming in through the triangular eye, nose and mouth gap of the dressing. ‘That bit of the allotment was never any good for growing things,’ said the man reflectively. ‘It wasn’t just the concrete floor. We might have got that up, I suppose. But underneath there, there was another room, see …’
The poor man thought Davies had attacked him. He jumped clear from the ground as he was caught by the detective’s hands. ‘A room? Underneath?’ demanded Davies hoarsely. ‘A room?’
‘Let me go!’ pleaded Mr Tilth. Davies dropped him. From his enclosed face his eyes shone. The garden man trembled. ‘Yes, that’s right, a room underneath. It was a sort of command post, I suppose, for the Home Guard. Like an air-raid shelter would be. There was a trap door, a sort of metal cover, like a manhole.’
‘And when they knocked the blockhouse down, they left the other bit under the ground? So it’s still there? And there’s a trap-door?’
‘Still there,’ confirmed the man more steadily. His anxiety was now becoming overtaken by curiosity. ‘Why?’
‘Come on,’ said Davies taking his hand like a child. ‘We’re going down there.’
‘What now?’ The man backed away. ‘At this hour of night.’
‘There’s no better time,’ insisted Davies. ‘Come on. Now.’
‘I’ll … I’ll get my coat and tell the missus,’ said Mr Tilth. He backed away, still staring at the glowing Davies. A female voice called down the stairs. ‘I’m getting my coat,’ the man called up. ‘I’m going out.’
‘Are they taking you in?’ inquired the woman, as though it was thoroughly expected.
‘Shut up, for God’s sake,’ Mr Tilth called back. ‘I’m going to help the detective.’
‘That’s what they always say,’ returned the woman stoically. She came down two stairs from the top and Davies could see her thin shins trapped in large furry slippers. ‘Helping the police with their inquiries,’ she taunted. ‘That’s what they say.’
‘Mr Tilth is not being arrested for anything,’ Davies called up to her. ‘He has some valuable information for the police, that’s all. We won’t be long.’
As they went out into the street she creaked open an upstairs window and leaned out. ‘It’s a bleeding trick mate,’ she called to her husband. ‘Don’t you admit nothing.’
‘Go to bed, for Christ’s sake,’ ordered the gardener.
‘All right,’ she returned angrily. ‘But don’t expect me to wait for you to come out of prison this time. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
‘Silly mare,’ commented Mr Tilth. They said nothing more. It was about ten minutes’ walk and they went silently through the hollow streets. Davies was conscious of a shiver in his stomach. He increased their pace. They crossed the main road and then went down along the bank of the canal. It was a dark night and they could not see the water, only sense it and hear its fidgeting. The lamp at the bridge stood in the distance like a mariners’ lighthouse; under it there was a reflected yellow sheen on the dull water and its illumination touched the boundary hedge of the allotments.
‘I’m glad I’m with you,’ said Mr Tilth. ‘The magistrate told me that the next time I came here I’d get three months minimum.’ He looked at Davies and even in the dark Davies could descern the question all over his face. ‘It is all right, isn’t it?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Davies said ambiguously. ‘We won’t be here long.’
‘I wish I knew what we’re going to do.’
‘Well, we’ve not come after turnips or sprouts,’ said Davies. ‘Not this time.’
The man obligingly showed him the easiest place to climb over the hedge and then followed him into the garden. It was an inhospitable patch, draped with cold darkness, damp rising to the knee. In a strange manner the crammed town seemed to have vanished. They might have been standing in a bog. Davies’s attention went straight to the end of the plot.
‘He’s got his greenhouse on it,’ sniffed Mr Tilth. ‘Rickety old thing.’
Davies walked slowly along the garden path. The greenhouse stood like a beached ship, a faint light coming through its ribs. The ground around was muddy, but Mr Tilth scratched the surface expertly with his shoe and Davies touched the concrete underneath.
‘Where was the entrance, the trap door?’ he whispered.
‘About here,’ said Mr Tilth. �
�He’s got the greenhouse over the top of it.’ He took a pace forward and opened the wheezy door of the wooden-framed building. Davies saw the whole structure wobble at the touch.
‘Bloody awful old thing, this,’ the other man complained. ‘Rotten. The wooden ones always fall to bits in the end.’
‘Is it inside, the trapdoor?’ asked Davies anxiously. He shone the torch to get his answer. It illuminated a small glade of pots and plants.
‘A mess, just like I thought,’ grumbled Mr Tilth. ‘Look at that Fatsia, Mr Davies. Ever seen such a disgrace?’ He pulled at a large leaf like a hand and it obediently came adrift from its stalk. He looked to the floor. ‘It’s all wooden boards,’ he said. ‘I thought he might have concreted it over again, but he wouldn’t bother. Not him.’
‘Good for him,’ remarked Davies. ‘Where’s the trap door then? Where is it?’
‘Let’s see. It would just about be at the far end, as I remember.’ He bent with the torch. ‘He’s got a whole lot of Pelegorams overwintering just there.’ He sniffed. ‘This lot won’t see the spring, anyway.’ He began to shift the pots without care, tossing them to both sides. There followed some seed boxes and then a brief struggle with some rotten planks which formed the floor. The debris began to pile up on the side. Eventually Mr Tilth straightened up. ‘There it is,’ he said simply.
Davies almost fell forward, stumbling in his bulky coat over the short planks, seed boxes and plastic flower plots. Mr Tilth was shining the torch downward. It illuminated a rusty metal cover, a yard square, fitted deep into the ground. Davies felt a frightening expectation. ‘We’ll need a shovel and a pick,’ he whispered. ‘Can you find them?’
‘I might have to break the toolshed lock,’ said Mr Tilth with patent hope.
‘Do it then.’
‘Right. Won’t be a minute. The shed’s rotten as well. This bloke’s got no idea. No idea at all.’
He went out leaving Davies crouched in almost a prayer-like attitude in front of the rusty metal square. He leaned forward, tapped it with his fist and backed minutely away as though expecting an answer.
A busy splintering of wood came from the darkness outside and then a grunt of accomplishment. Mr Tilth loomed behind him with a spade and a pickaxe. ‘You’d better let me do it,’ the gardener suggested. ‘I know the best way. And with your face all like that …’
Davies did not ponder the logic of the statement. He stood back and let the man go to work with a nocturnal professionalism. In that confined place it was like digging in a coal mine. Small cargoes of stony earth came back as Mr Tilth cleaned the fringe of the metal plate. Eventually he stopped and remarked quietly over his shoulder: ‘There’s a sort of metal ring at one end. If we can hook the toe of the pickaxe into it we might be able to see if it’s going to shift.’
Eagerly Davies passed the pickaxe to him. He was feeling sweaty now, with the inherent warmth of the greenhouse, his heavy clothes, his bandages and his mounting excitement. Mr Tilth took the tool and manoeuvred while Davies shone the torch between his legs, the only convenient aperture. The point of the implement eventually engaged the ring and Davies heard it creak as the ring moved on its hinge. ‘Right, let’s give it a try,’ suggested Mr Tilth. ‘Let me have a go first.’ His small muscular body bent in the dimness but there was no answering scrape from the horizontal trap. He tried again, fiercely, but then gave it up. ‘Good and fixed,’ he panted. ‘Been fixed for too long.’
‘Let’s both have a go,’ suggested Davies. With difficulty he found space beside Mr Tilth, pushing plants and pots roughly aside to make room. There were two benches now confining them, one on each side. Mr Tilth straightened up and with dark enjoyment tipped one of them on its side sending a further avalanche of nurtured greenery to the floor. Davies took the cue and capsized the other. ‘Serve the bugger right,’ muttered the deposed gardener happily.
They now had room to both hold the pick. The area of the trap had been cleared but it seemed to have rusted into the very earth. The point of the pick was still engaged in the corroded ring. ‘Right,’ said Davies ‘Let’s try it.’
They both bore down on the handle, seeking to lever the plate from its setting. Nothing happened. They eased off and rested, panting, then tried again. This time they felt it move. ‘Steady a minute,’ said Davies. They relaxed. ‘Next time it’ll come.’
It did. They felt it shudder and then begin to move upwards towards them. Davies knew he was shaking with anticipation. ‘Keep it up,’ he snorted. ‘Another good one.’
Then the handle came out of the pickaxe. They were heaving at their utmost when it happened and the release sent them violently staggering back. The considerable weight of Davies, followed by Mr Tilth, collided with the flimsy end wall of the greenhouse behind them. The rotting wood bulged, buckled and collapsed, splintered and split all about them, the panes of glass sliding like a glacier over a precipice. With a sigh the rest of the aged greenhouse followed the collapse, sagging forward and easing itself gratefully to the ground. It fell with no great sound as though it had been awaiting the moment for years. It stretched itself out, some of the glass breaking, but most of the panes simply slithering away. Davies and Mr Tilth found themselves lying under a blanket of wreckage.
‘Oh dear,’ said Mr Tilth inadequately. ‘That’s fucking done it.’
Davies dragged himself clear and he and the gardener got to their feet beside what now appeared to be the debris of some disastrous Zeppelin.
‘Come on,’ said Davies limping around to the rear of the wreckage. Mr Tilth, who was patently enjoying himself on what he saw as some sort of licensed destruction, wiped the wood-dust from his eyes and followed. ‘Ah, that’s good,’ said Davies. Mr Tilth followed his downward look. The wall’s falling the opposite way had almost cleared the metal plate. It required only a few random pushes with their shoes to clear away some stray wood and glass and there it was as exposed as before. ‘Can you get the pick?’ said Davies almost absently.
‘The pick’s no bloody good,’ answered Mr Tilth. ‘The man can’t even look after his tools. Anyway we’ve loosened it up, what we want now is some wire. There’s some hanging outside his shed. Hang on, Mr Davies. Just hang on.’
He returned quickly with the wire, it was stout and tough. They hooked and bent it around the upturned ring and then, moving to the side, clear of the debris, they heaved on it like a tug-of-war team. They felt the metal shift, scrape, then shift again. Another effort, another taking of the strain, and they heard the whole plate come away. Just ahead of them, in the dark, was a hole.
‘Now what?’ asked Mr Tilth.
He looked through the night in surprise. Davies was merely standing there, stiff, as though unable to make the final move. ‘Now what, indeed,’ he said and his voice trembled over the few words. They had put the torch on the ground and now he reached for it and went deliberately towards the square aperture they had opened in the earth. Mr Tilth stood back, wondering, in the manner of someone watching a secret ritual they do not comprehend. Davies reached the hole and stood looking down, still not shining the torch into the opening. Then he did.
It shone immediately on the bones. A pathetic, lonely pile of cold, damp bones. Davies kneeled and looked closer. The torch wavered in his hands. He felt a huge engulfing sadness rising in his throat. Tears flooded his eyes. ‘Oh, Celia,’ he muttered. ‘What a rotten trick.’
Eighteen
In the morning the ward sister stopped by his bed and said: ‘Ah, there, now you look a whole lot better for a good night’s sleep.’
Since he had not returned to his bed before three o’clock he raised his eyebrows as far as he was able. She could only see the triangle of his face between eyes and point of chin, a small area from which to judge that someone was looking better, so he concluded that it was just hospital small talk. Nevertheless after two hours a doctor examined him and said he could go home but had to return every day to the out-patients’ department. He went gladly.
Mod
was at his desk in the library, like an archbishop wallowing in his books. As Davies walked into the foyer, and paused to smile gratefully at the Home Guard photograph on the wall, he could see a girl from the staff taking Mod a cup of coffee at the distant end of the reference room.
He walked in, evoking disapproving looks from staff and customers, people in bandages apparently being unwelcome. Mod saw him coming and smiled felicitations.
‘All better, then, son?’ he whispered drinking the coffee above the pages of the open volume before him. ‘Glad to see you out.’
Davies sat down and stared from the aperture in his bandages. ‘I’ve found her,’ he said simply. ‘I’ve found the body.’
Mod jerked a wave of coffee over the side of the cup and on to the printed page. His sharp and guilty look was followed by a swift sweep of his sleeve to wipe it away. ‘Where?’ he asked.
Davies told him where and how it had taken place. ‘I remembered that Home Guard photo out in the lobby there,’ he said. ‘It’s got a picture of the blockhouse that used to be along by the canal. It’s been knocked down, but it had a basement room, a kind of concrete operations room. That’s where he put her. Down there.’
Mod’s library whisper whistled across the table. ‘What did you do?’
‘I left her there,’ Davies said simply. ‘I pulled the cover back and left her there. I’ve told the gardening bloke, Mr Tilth, that if he says a word to anyone I’ll investigate the theft of a palm tree, which he’s got standing in his living room at the moment. That scared him. He won’t tell.’
‘You won’t do anything? Not report it?’
Davies shook his head, still a painful achievement. ‘I’m going to risk it, Mod,’ he said. ‘I’ve got her but I haven’t got him yet.’
‘It looks more and more like our policeman friend,’ muttered Mod. ‘Police Constable Dudley. And he’s dead. So you’ll never get him.’ He touched the coffee-damp pages of his book then closed it. ‘Nobody will open that again for a few years anyway,’ he shrugged. ‘By that time it won’t matter, will it?’
The Complete Dangerous Davies Page 23
