‘Hello, Dangerous. What you up to then?’
‘Sponsored salvage dive, Shiny.’
The newcomer nodded, turned and walked back towards the crowd on the bridge. ‘They was all wondering,’ he mentioned.
Tennant was preparing to go into the canal again, taking the ropes and a metal hook. ‘Shiny Bright,’ said Davies to Jemma with a nod at the small man’s departing back. ‘Did a housebreaking once and wore a pair of mittens so he wouldn’t leave fingerprints.’
Tennant went into the water, this time with a mildly triumphant splash. He surfaced once, went down and surfaced again. He threw the rope ashore to Archie. He held up two hands in a signal and then submerged once more. Archie began to count, wagging one finger. When he reached fifty, he nodded to wedge-faced Charlie and they began to heave studiously on the rope. It tightened. Davies moved forward to help and after a hesitation, so did Mod. Davies motioned him aside. ‘You stand there and think,’ he said. The other three men began to pull. Kitty, sensing the excitement, barked. They heaved until the smooth, once-white handle of the perambulator surfaced.
‘Hold it, hold it,’ muttered Davies anxiously.
‘Keep hauling,’ contradicted Archie. They hauled. Tennant’s seal-like head appeared almost alongside the pram and he began to swim in small rings, guiding it with his flippers. Gradually, it cleared the surface, the brown-grey water cascading from within.
‘Now!’ snorted Archie and with a final haul, they brought it clear of the water, the wheels cutting into the mud of the bank and on to the flat surface. The stench was appalling.
‘Is that it, then?’ said Archie.
Davies said defensively: ‘That’s it.’
Archie and Charlie helped Tennant from the water. ‘You won’t find anything else,’ he forecast. ‘There’s too much gunge on the bottom.’
Jemma moved forward and put both hands into the well of the pram, located and turned the four rusted clips. ‘There’s always a little trapdoor in the bottom,’ she said. ‘You can put a potty in it.’
Davies put his hands into the cavity and brought out a large oblong biscuit tin, its lid strapped to its body by overlayers of sticky tape. ‘“Jacob’s Cream Crackers,”’ he read aloud.
At Jemma’s place the black and white babies had gone but had been replaced by a sprawling woman who occupied an armchair, knitting frantically at a nebulous garment that spread itself about her like a ceremonial robe. ‘Edeee!’ she bellowed. ‘I’m Edeee!’
‘That’s Edie,’ said Jemma. She placed Lofty’s sealed biscuit tin on the table.
Tentatively, Davies and Mod greeted Edie. ‘What did she say her name was?’ asked Davies. Jemma glared at him. Davies put his hand to his ear.
‘Edeee!’ bawled the woman. ‘It’s Edeee!’
‘Edie is staying for a while until they find a place for her,’ said Jemma.
‘Somewhere isolated,’ suggested Mod.
Jemma regarded him sternly. ‘There’s no need to have your fun at her expense,’ she reproved. ‘She’s got nowhere to go.’
Mod looked shamefaced. Davies studied the spread-eagled stranger. Solicitously he leaned over the knitting. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Edeee!’ hooted the woman. ‘It’s Edeee!’
‘You’re upsetting her,’ warned Jemma seriously. ‘It’s knitting. It’s therapy. She’s not knitting anything in particular. Don’t you think we had better look in Lofty’s box?’
Davies agreed. Mod was smiling inanely at Edie, nodding encouragement for the needles clicking like a two-stroke engine. They turned their attention to the biscuit box. It was scratched and scuffed. ‘“King Edward the Eighth,”’ Davies read on the design. ‘“Coronation.”’ There was a figure in robes below the scratches, like someone standing behind a gauze curtain. Jemma produced a pair of scissors and deftly cut the blackened tape which sealed the tin. She nodded, passing the authority on to Davies. He pulled at one of the severed ends. Edie ceased knitting and creaked forward. ‘Is it biscuits?’ she shouted.
Jemma turned to calm her. Davies had pulled the binding away from the box. He eased the rusted lid free. Within was a further box, well-made wood, with good brass hinges and a brass lock, which was open. Davies turned back the lid. The water had scarcely penetrated the sealed tin and the wood was only damp. Inside, packed closely with yellow newspaper, was a collection of elderly utensils, an ancient safety razor and a packet of blades, a stained bottle of Doctor Collis Browne’s Mixture, a thick penknife, a mirror dimly blinking at the unaccustomed light, a cream jug in the shape of a cow with the words: ‘A present from Clacton-on-Sea’ on its flank, a hairbrush, a tin picture frame surrounding the faded face of an unhappy woman, and a single pearl in a worn ring box. Davies picked it out. ‘I wonder if it’s real?’ he said. Jemma held it in her fingers. ‘It’s warm,’ she said. ‘It’s real.’
She handed it back to him and he opened his hand flat and let it lie there. ‘Look at that,’ he said quietly. ‘Now what was Lofty Brock doing with a pearl?’ They regarded it in silence, the stone rocking slightly in the palm of Davies’s hand, until Mod said: ‘Edward the Eighth didn’t have a coronation. They made all these biscuit tins for nothing.’
One by one Davies took the items from the wooden box. The mottled face of the woman blinked from her tin porthole. She was regarding the camera with suspicion, as if she feared something might jump from it. Davies turned it over and opened the stiff clips at the back. The little metal door opened. ‘Nothing,’ he said, turning the photograph over. ‘No name. Nothing.’
He took the creased newspaper packing and spread it out. ‘August 13, 1936,’ he said. ‘The Daily Express.’
He surveyed the unpromising hoard. ‘Well, we’ve got a photograph, a box, a biscuit tin, a cow, a penknife, some medicine, a newspaper, a razor and a hairbrush … and a pearl.’ He began replacing the articles in the box, packing them in the newspaper. As he did so he paused and read a headline from the sere pages. ‘“Masterly Century by Hammond,”’ he read aloud. ‘Good old Wally,’ he said.
The Vauxhall Vanguard in which his dog lived was in its turn lodged in a railway-arch garage only a minute’s walk from ‘Bali Hi’, Furtman Gardens. On Thursday, his day off, Davies fastened a new rope to Kitty’s collar and took him along the rain-smeared streets, down the steps from the road bridge and along the canal tow-path. It was a poor day, the sky the same sludgy hue as the water, the only specks of brightness coming from the early-afternoon lights in the small factories and warehouses on the banks.
There were a dozen of these close premises, three with their outer walls facing the canal. Shurrock Industrial Clocks, Blissen Ltd Pharmaceuticals, and Security Plus Safes were each housed in an identical building: two-storey brick under a flat roof, with offices on the upper floor and working or storage space on the floor below. Each had a double loading door leading out on to a concrete road that ran at right angles to the canal tow-path. At the end of the road, at the tow-path end, there was a metal-grid fence with a door at its centre. Clocks and Pharmaceuticals faced each other across their joint access with the Safes on the left of the Clocks, nearer the town and the road bridge. The businesses closed simultaneously at five each evening, but the Safes’ employees were first in the bus queue.
George Williams, the manager of Security Plus Safes, was a stiff-faced, busy man, chairman of the Rotary, the town sports committee and the ex-servicemen’s club. He shook hands with Davies and his eyes flicked to his watch. ‘I won’t keep you,’ Davies reassured him. ‘I’ve left my dog on a double yellow line.’
Williams laughed emptily like someone who has heard every joke ever told. Despite the season he was in his shirtsleeves. ‘What’s it all about?’ he asked, sitting on the last two inches of his desk. He had a pointed moustache like miniature buffalo horns. He motioned Davies to one of the two chairs in the small office. The walls were covered with samples of safe doors, like a burglar’s dream. ‘Is it about the licence?’ he asked, this tim
e looking frankly at his watch.
‘What licence is that?’ asked Davies.
‘For the club. The Ex-Service Club. We’ve had trouble with the magistrates.’
‘Different department,’ corrected Davies firmly. ‘At the moment, anyway. No, I was wondering – do you have any night security here?’
‘Not much. I mean there’s not much to steal except the safes. Most of them weigh a ton.’
‘You did have a break-in though, if I remember. A couple of years ago?’
Williams thinned his lips, the buffalo moustache see-sawed. ‘Don’t remind me,’ he sighed. ‘It got in the newspapers.’
Davies nodded. ‘Petty cash, wasn’t it?’
‘Right. Well-known safe company and some idiot leaves the petty cash lying on the desk and it’s nicked. Funny story for the papers.’
Consulting his notebook Davies said: ‘Five hundred and three quid.’
‘Was it? I can’t remember the exact amount. We must have needed it for some reason.’
‘More than just stamps,’ added Davies.
‘We must have needed it,’ Williams said again. ‘But we don’t have any big deal security. It’s damned expensive. All the businesses here share one security company and they’re no great shakes.’ He regarded Davies challengingly. ‘Anyway, that’s why we’ve got a police force.’
‘Ah, the good old days,’ mused Davies. ‘The bobby on the beat.’ He shifted in the chair. ‘No, the only reason I asked is to find out whether anyone here might have seen or heard anything, any commotion, along the tow-path on the night of October 6th.’ Williams glanced at his desk calendar. Davies continued: ‘An old chap fell … went into the canal. Got drowned.’
Williams nodded. ‘I read about it. He used to trundle along with that old pram. Plastered, I suppose.’
‘Never touched it,’ said Davies. He stood up. ‘It was about eleven at night. There wouldn’t have been anyone here then, on the premises?’
‘No way. This is not the sort of business where there’s a call for much overtime. It’s just steady. So there’d be no one here. Not at that time of night.’
‘Thanks,’ said Davies. ‘I just thought I’d ask.’
Mr Harrison, of Blissen Ltd Pharmaceuticals, was on holiday in Las Palmas, his lacquered secretary informed Davies proudly. It was his fourth visit. They had received a card only that morning. Would Mrs Harrer do? Davies said he thought she might. He waited in the narrow reception area, boarded with pine like a sauna, with some arty lighting and a cornered palm. The receptionist, a wan, desultory girl, wore green fingernails. ‘It’s all right for him,’ she said. ‘Las Palmas. I wish I was in Las Palmas.’
‘So do I,’ agreed Davies, studying her slothful posture. ‘We could have a good time.’
‘Cheeky bugger,’ she said in almost a whisper. She returned to watching her nails. The secretary clipped back, her thighs like rods under her pencil skirt. ‘Mrs Harrer will see you,’ she said, as though he had won a prize. ‘This way.’
They turned a couple of plywood bends up a flight of stairs and Davies was confronted with an office door which framed, but only just, the form of a huge woman. ‘Ah, so,’ she said thickly. The Germanic was compounded by a nasal American tone. ‘You are the police. Tell me what it is.’
Apparently as an afterthought, she held out her hand. Davies was shocked at her height: one of the biggest women he had ever seen. Her great fingers enclosed his.
‘We have security?’ she said when he told her why he had come. ‘But of course. This place is for the storage of pharmaceuticals, and pharmaceuticals are expensive. You, perhaps, are on National Health Service.’
Davies bashfully admitted he was. ‘What sort of security do you have?’ he asked. ‘A night-watchman?’
‘They sleep,’ she shrugged. ‘We have a security company. They visit every hour in the night.’
Diffidently, Davies took out his notebook. ‘Could you tell me who they are, please?’ he said. ‘I am just inquiring so that we can clear up the death of this old man.’
‘So he fell in the water? Is that not cleared up? Already there was a police officer here, the day after. A man with a bloody nose.’
‘Ah, yes. PC Westerman,’ nodded Davies.
‘There is a treatment,’ she confided professionally. ‘He can go on the National Health.’
‘I’ll tell him,’ promised Davies. ‘Now … could I have the name of the security people.’
‘Ah so! Ja.’ She went to a filing cabinet, rising as Davies imagined a volcano might rise from the sea. The great globe of skirted backside was spread before him. She returned with a surprisingly soft smile. ‘There, I have,’ she said. She handed the headed notepaper to him. He copied it laboriously into his notebook, muttering the words: ‘Keystone Security, Edgware Mews, London W1.’ When he looked up, her face had set hard with impatience. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I must be going.’
‘Yes, I suppose you must. We are busy, you are busy.’
Massively, she moved towards him and he backed away before the oncoming chest, then went out of the office, down the stairs and into the narrow corridor. Mrs Harrer only just fitted. ‘Do you make, manufacture, stuff here?’ asked Davies, as they reached the reception area. The receptionist had slotted her magazine between her knees.
‘Not at all,’ said the big woman. ‘We are part of a larger European operation, you understand. This place is for distribution only.’
He saw she was frowning through the glass of the door at Kitty who was tethered outside. ‘What is that?’ she demanded. ‘That dog?’
‘Oh,’ apologised Davies. ‘It’s mine.’
‘What a gross thing. It is so big,’ she said.
‘Gross,’ agreed Davies.
Davies was certain he had seen Mr Adrian Shurrock, of Shurrock Industrial Clocks, in different surroundings.
The wispy young man agreed. ‘I do amateur dramatics,’ he said.
Davies sat in the office. On the desk stood half a dozen time-pieces. ‘What’s this one for?’ he asked, picking up a dial in a brass housing.
The man looked confused. ‘It is a bit of a secret,’ he said. ‘But as you’re the police …’
‘Don’t tell me,’ said Davies, holding up his hand. ‘I couldn’t bear the responsibility.’ He opened his notebook and unnecessarily referred to it. ‘There was a man drowned in the canal on the night of October 6th, and we’re just trying to work out how he came to get in there,’ he said. ‘Was there anybody on these premises that night?’
‘I thought that was all over,’ said Shurrock. ‘There was an inquest.’
Davies said uncomfortably: ‘These things sometimes drag on, you know.’
‘Oh, I imagine. And you want to know if there was anybody here who might have seen something. Well, we do have security.’
‘I suppose,’ suggested Davies, picking up the brass-bound dial again, ‘that clocks like these could be used for timing devices. For bombs, maybe.’
Shurrock appeared shocked and shook his head. ‘We keep all our sensitive time-pieces at our other premises in Maidenhead. These would be a bit big and clumsy for that sort of thing. But we do employ a security company – Keystone …’
Davies recited: ‘… Keystone Security, Edgware Mews, London, W1.’
‘That’s them. We share the service with the other businesses on this industrial estate. They patrol all the time. Or they’re supposed to.’
Davies closed his notebook. Shurrock looked relieved that he was going. He accompanied him to the main door. ‘Is that your dog?’ the young man asked.
‘Yes. His name’s Kitty.’
‘He’s ever so big, isn’t he,’ said the young man.
They shook hands. After Mrs Harrer’s big paw, the young man’s grip was damp and limp. ‘You’ve never had a break-in here, have you?’ Davies asked, as he was about to untether Kitty.
‘Oh no. Never,’ said Shurrock. ‘Thank goodness.’
That night when he ret
urned to the railway-arch garage to feed the dog and put it to bed, there was a scrawled note fixed under the windscreen wiper of the Vanguard. It read: ‘Be at 143a, Maida Crescent, tonight for a surprise. Come alone.’ It was signed: ‘A well-wisher.’
He did not like scrawled notes fixed to windscreens any more than he liked keeping solitary appointments with persons unknown. In the past he had been set upon and half murdered. As a precaution he left the address with Mod and went alone on the bus.
It was in Maida Vale, a half-oval of Victorian villas ripe for developers. Some already had a grid of scaffolding and notice-boards. One of those being gutted was number 143, a threatening place, caged in iron, dark and windowless. He was not going in there.
As he searched for an annexe or separate entrance marked 143a, he was startled by organ music and a burst of choral singing. Next along the crescent was the lit and open door of a church hall. The voices rose strongly. He moved cautiously towards them. You never knew with religion. He did not want to end up being baptised. There was an iron gate, on it the number 143a. He stepped towards the reassuring doorway.
There was a lobby and beyond this a further pair of doors, these closed. The singing ceased and was replaced by brisk applause. The doors half opened and the lively face of a silver-haired woman emerged. ‘Late!’ she admonished. ‘You’re quite late.’
‘Oh, sorry,’ mumbled Davies. ‘I didn’t know.’
She pushed the door and let herself out. ‘It’s fifty pence,’ she announced, producing a coil of tickets. He fumbled for the money and took the ticket. ‘Quickly now,’ she warned. ‘You’ll have to sit at the back. It’s jam-packed.’
As if released by his push on the door, there came a sudden burst of voices. He hesitated but then went in with the door lady behind him, nudging him in the small of the back. He sat on a chair immediately inside and looked over the heads towards the platform at the far end. The choir was ranged in a semi-circle: men in bow ties, ladies in long black dresses. At one side was a small orchestra with a stumpy conductor standing on a box. Davies looked about him. Who wanted to meet him here? One of the singers stepped forward and with a full, lovely contralto began to sing:
The Complete Dangerous Davies Page 31
