‘Come on in,’ said its owner. ‘Not that you’re going to do any good.’
He was pale and waddling, his stomach stretching the braces he wore to the shape of twin bows, his bedroom slippers flattened; there was stubble on his chin and a wet film on his eye. ‘Look at bloody that,’ he said as they entered the denuded room.
Mrs Perryman, a person in an overall, was occupying an armchair staring at a blank wall. The impressions of the legs of the missing television set were still imprinted in the carpet. ‘She can’t believe it’s gone,’ said the man.
‘Can’t believe it,’ his wife confirmed. She took Davies in with a swift, beady look, as if he might have done the job himself. ‘I’d offer you a cup of something, but there’s no cups,’ she muttered. ‘We’re drinking from jam jars we are, until the insurance man’s been.’
‘A thorough job,’ observed Davies inadequately as he looked around.
‘Locusts,’ said the man with a sort of sob. ‘All they left is the stuff they couldn’t move. They left our bed but they nicked the bedclothes.’
‘We’ve been kipping in our overcoats,’ complained the woman. ‘Where’s the other copper gone? We told him everything before.’
‘Detective Constable Burrows?’ said Davies. ‘He’s gone on a course.’
‘Very nice,’ sneered the woman. ‘For him.’
‘I hope I will replace him adequately,’ muttered Davies.
‘I’ve seen you,’ put in the man jabbing his finger. ‘Mooching about the streets. I never realised you was a copper.’
‘In disguise, I expect,’ said Davies. ‘Now let’s see. I’ve got this list of stuff that was taken.’ He unfolded the piece of paper Burrows had left him and sniffed. ‘Anything you would recognise for certain? I mean it might be difficult to recognise a piece of cheddar. Fancy nicking the cheese.’
‘Desperate men,’ said Mr Perryman.
‘And there’s your cup,’ reminded his wife.
‘A cup?’ asked Davies arching his eyebrows.
The man regarded him without hope. ‘A silver cup,’ he said heavily. ‘A trophy. I won it at Butlins …’
Davies opened his notebook. ‘So it’s got your name on it.’
‘No. But it’s got Butlins’ name on it, ain’t it. I won it at Clacton a few years ago.’
‘What was it for?’
The man looked as though he preferred not to tell. But his wife said: ‘Tap.’
‘Tap dancing,’ confessed the man. He had gone pink under his stubble. ‘I used to do it. And tell jokes.’
Davies quietly glanced at the bulging braces. ‘Tap dancing and jokes.’
‘Not at the same time,’ pointed out the wife. Her tone changed. ‘He’d do a bit of a tap then tell a joke, wouldn’t you. He was very good.’
‘Very good,’ confirmed Mr Perryman. ‘But the cup was quite small.’
‘He came third,’ said the woman. Her husband stretched his grimed finger and thumb apart. ‘About that size.’
‘Ah, that’s something anyway,’ Davies assured them. ‘There can’t be many of those.’ He regarded each of them carefully. ‘And you’ve no idea who might have cleared you out?’
‘If I knew we’d have been around there,’ said the man.
‘Get the telly back,’ put in his wife.
‘Emptying the fridge,’ said Davies shaking his head.
‘Hungry,’ said the woman.
‘The back door was forced,’ said Davies.
‘In and out that way,’ said Mr Perryman. ‘There’s an alleyway runs along the backs of the gardens, or what they like to call the gardens, rubbish dumps most of them since this lane went ethnic.’
‘We’re the only non-ethnics in this terrace,’ said his wife.
‘Next door?’
‘One way Indians, the other Irish,’ the man said. ‘We count Irish as ethnic. O’Callaghan they’re called.’
‘The Indians are called Fatti,’ said the woman looking at her husband’s stomach.
For the rest of the week it rained; iron cold January rain, thick to thin and back to thick again. It seemed it rained all night and then all day. Gutters gurgled, the sky was like a sponge, the earth soggy.
Detective Constable Davies spent the entire time walking the streets, from door to door, showing photographs and reciting a description of Julie Willis, aged sixteen, asking over and over if anyone knew her, or had known her, if they had seen her and when. He was soaked.
An old lady believed he had come as a reply to a prayer. She took him in for a cup of tea, which he had to make because she was so arthritic, and then cried when he had to leave because she had seen nobody for days and nights. He went and bought some groceries for her and telephoned Jemma. But the old lady did not trouble the social services for long before she died.
Nobody said they had seen Julie Willis and nobody wanted to know about her. What was another wandering girl?
On Sunday Davies felt as if his tonsillitis was creeping back. But he still went to the car-boot sale. It could not rain any more; the sky seemed incapable of it; the sun blinked out over the sopping scene. The car-boot sale was near the Welsh Harp, which was as close to the country as Willesden ever got, a green sward around a big lake. The water reflected the washed-out sky.
Davies knew what he was looking for and it was not long before he saw it. ‘That’s a nice little silver cup,’ he told a man standing by an open boot.
‘Silver? Ah, you’d be right there,’ said the vendor, a perky Irishman with a 1970 Ford. ‘You’re a man with an eye.’
‘For some things,’ mentioned Davies picking up the cup. Engraved on the side was: ‘Butlins, Clacton, 1974.’
‘Good year 1974,’ he said.
The Irishman was getting worried. ‘For silver was it?’ he said eyeing Davies anxiously.
‘For Butlins,’ said Davies. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Can you give me a reason?’
‘The reason is I’m a police officer.’
‘O’Callaghan.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘Power Station Lane. You’ll be knowing where that is.’
‘I know the house that was done over.’ He lifted the cup. ‘Where you got this.’ The Irishman started to look sideways. ‘Now I don’t know about this,’ he said.
‘What did you do with the cheese?’
O’Callaghan looked at him helplessly: ‘I ate the cheese,’ he said.
Six
On Monday there was a letter for Davies when he got back to Bali Hi in the evening.
‘Thought I’d better preserve it,’ said Mod.
‘What’s that mean?’ asked Davies taking the envelope. They were in the hall by the raincoats.
‘That kid, the one with the sticky eyes, who’s supposed to be taming the garden … Elvis.’
‘What about him?’
‘He asked the postman if he could help with the delivery. Then he inquired if there were any old letters the postman didn’t want.’
Davies looked aghast. ‘So he could …’
‘Ignite them,’ finished Mod dolefully.
Davies took the letter to his room. He sat on the bed. It was postmarked Bournemouth. Carefully he opened it.
‘Dear Mr Dangerous Davies,’ it said. He smiled and glanced at the signature. Louisa Dulciman. He read:
I am very sorry to pursue you like this after you had so firmly but charmingly declined my offer of an ‘unofficial’ assignment but there has been a very strange and slightly macabre development – my husband’s teeth have turned up!
I received a package in this morning’s post and the set of false dentures were enclosed – with no note, no explanation. As I write this they are on the table by my bed. I would recognise that grating smile anywhere. Even artificial teeth have a certain life, a certain set angle if you like, and these teeth undoubtedly belonged to Vernon Dulciman. I only have to look at them to see the rest of his face form around them. It is most uncanny.
; Whatever am I going to do, Mr Davies?
He put the letter down to his lap and stared at the bleak single window of his room. It faced onto the back garden and there was a glow of a bonfire in the evening darkness.
‘That’s creepy, teeth,’ said Jemma that night in the Babe In Arms. She regarded Davies potently. ‘… Poor old dear. She must be scared out of her wits.’
‘So much so,’ pointed out Davies tapping the letter, ‘that she’s got these gnashers sitting at the side of her bed.’
Mod blew out his cheeks and then inhaled dramatically, a sign that his thoughts were deep. ‘But it’s all the more intriguing, isn’t it, Dangerous?’ he observed. ‘Most, most mysterious.’
Davies turned his eyes from one to the other. Their faces were expectant. ‘You two,’ he complained. ‘You’re thinking of endless weekends in sunny Bournemouth, that’s all.’
‘The fee would ease a few problems,’ sniffed Mod.
‘Whose?’
Jemma shut her eyes as though to extinguish a thought. Her eyes were so powerful that when she closed them she looked like a different person. ‘A poor, elderly lady, getting teeth through the post,’ she sighed.
‘Stop it, will you,’ pleaded Davies. They were all distracted by the approach of a black girl who had come in from the rain, a thin child with eyes and forehead protruding from a coat covering her head. She was wearing a school blazer under her makeshift hood. ‘Miss,’ she said to Jemma. ‘Miss, mum sent me.’ She drew a breath and recited: ‘Mr Cooldridge is trying to kill Mrs Cooldridge again. Can you come?’
‘Paradise Walk,’ said Jemma standing up. ‘How hard is he trying?’
‘Don’t know, miss,’ said the girl in her north-London voice. ‘But ’e’s giving it ’is best shot. It’s because of Mrs Cooldridge been ’aving it away.’
‘As distinct from at home,’ muttered Davies. He rose. ‘I’ll come with you.’
Jemma unconvincingly held up her hand. ‘No need. I can handle it.’
‘I’ll come,’ he repeated. ‘I’ve never seen a murder committed.’ She glanced gratefully at him. ‘Look after the drinks will you,’ he said to Mod.
They went out into the drizzle, the young girl clicking along before them on her spindle legs. ‘If he kills ’er can I ’ave a look?’ she called over her shoulder.
‘You can be first,’ promised Davies.
Paradise Walk was not paradise, but it was only a walk. They went down a flight of stone steps. Sounds, violent sounds, were issuing through a thin front door. The windows of the tenements opposite were blobbed with silhouetted heads.
‘Stay here,’ said Davies to Jemma.
‘Look, I know them …’
‘I don’t think that’s going to help.’
A voice from the windows opposite called: ‘It’s Dangerous! Good ol’ Dangerous.’
With them all watching he knocked authoritatively on the door. Silence fell inside. Then came a woman’s plaintive howl. The door flew open and the massive Mr Cooldridge was there.
‘You!’ he bellowed. Like a man with not a moment to lose, he punched wildly at Davies who managed to take most of the blow on his arm. But the force of the assault sent him staggering and, with a last-minute wobble, falling down the next flight of stony steps. He landed at the bottom almost rolled into a ball and groaned.
Jemma charged towards the door. ‘Cooldridge, you idiot!’ she bellowed. ‘Assault on a police officer! You’ll go down!’
‘Officer?’ inquired Cooldridge with surprised mildness. ‘Which police officer?’
Ineffectually Jemma pounded the big man on the chest. She pointed down the steps. ‘What the hell do you think that is?’ Davies was trying to get to his feet.
‘Oh sorry,’ said Cooldridge genuinely. ‘I didn’t look. I thought it was that bastard Rufus Ruggley. He what’s been romancing my wife.’
It was only an outpatient job this time. Merely examination, x-rays, and something to soothe the bruises. But Davies felt injured. ‘I’ve been ill,’ he complained to Jemma when they were waiting to see the doctor. ‘I’ve been getting soaked all the week and that on top of tonsillitis, not to mention the going over I got at the European Friendship Dinner and Dance …’
‘When will it stop?’ she asked.
‘That’s what I ask myself,’ he said regarding her with hurt eyes. ‘How could he think I was his wife’s lover, for God’s sake? Rufus is black.’ He paused and added sorrowfully, ‘I’m just black and blue.’
She tried not to smile. She patted him. ‘It was so dark, that was the trouble,’ she murmured soothingly. ‘And he was so out of control he couldn’t see properly. He knew Rufus was coming around to straighten things out. Instead he straightened you out. It was very sporting of you not to prefer charges, Dangerous.’
‘To allow him to go back to his weeping, forgiving, repentant wife,’ groaned Davies. ‘I always seem to be piggy in the bloody middle.’ He looked seriously at her. ‘I feel terrible. I feel really terrible.’
‘Have you got any leave owing?’
‘Ten days from last year.’
‘You’ll have to take it,’ she said decisively. ‘We’ll go off somewhere where you can rest.’
His eyes focused her with difficulty. ‘Bournemuff?’ he croaked.
‘Is that Mrs Dulciman?’
‘Mr Davies, it’s you! I know your voice even now.’
‘Oh, yes. Well …’
‘What have you decided, Mr Davies?’
He paused. He was committed now. ‘I have some leave owing, so I thought I would …’
‘Take on my case!’ She sounded thrilled. ‘How wonderful! His teeth are snarling at me right now. Perhaps we will find out what happened to the rest of him.’
‘Er … yes. Well, we can try. One thing, though …’
‘What is that?’
‘I appreciate your offer of an advance on the fee …’
‘Half. Is that satisfactory? Two thousand five hundred pounds.’
‘Well, I’d rather not, Mrs Dulciman. I have no idea whether I will be able to find the answer to your husband’s disappearance. It looks a very complicated case … so I would be happier if the fee were paid afterwards.’
‘But …’
‘I think it’s the right thing to do,’ he insisted. ‘I don’t even know how much time I can give to it.’
‘But you’ll be taking a risk,’ she pointed out. ‘You could be in trouble. Your career could be ruined.’
He laughed. ‘No danger of that, Mrs Dulciman. But I will only take the case on that basis. When it’s cleared up – if it’s cleared up – I get paid.’
In the end Jemma could not go. One of her problem families had rioted. Her car was thus unavailable and so, with a surge of determination, Davies backed the old Vauxhall Vanguard out of the garage and summoned Derry, an oil-streaked young man, to come to the yard and start it. Derry had a guilty conscience. ‘Any time, Mr Davies,’ he said.
‘This crate has to get to Bournemouth,’ said Davies.
He might have said Valparaiso. ‘That’s a long way, Mr Davies,’ sniffed Derry. ‘In this.’
He muttered and tinkered below the bonnet. ‘How many people?’ he asked, his voice hollow in the cavity.
‘Two men and a dog,’ said Davies. Kitty began a low moaning from his bed in the garage. Davies called reassuringly. ‘Yes, yes. You’re coming. Don’t worry.’
Derry eventually emerged and climbed into the threadbare driving seat. To his and Davies’ astonishment, he started the engine. ‘That’s brilliant,’ breathed Derry proudly. ‘Getting life out of this heap.’ He peered at the speedometer. ‘It’s done eighty thousand.’
‘That’s the second time around,’ admitted Davies.
He gave Derry a fiver. As the boy left Mod arrived. ‘We’re going to tempt providence, are we?’ he frowned.
‘It’s time she had a little run out,’ shrugged Davies. ‘We’re off as soon as you’ve packed your silk pyjamas and handmade
suits and shirts into your designer luggage.’
‘That shouldn’t take long,’ said Mod. ‘We could be in open country, driving south-west by lunchtime. I will navigate.’
‘Bournemouth,’ read Mod ponderously as they travelled. ‘Hampshire. Fine beaches, good amenities. Winter Garden, only four hours from Waterloo, omnibuses to outlying areas. Hotels from three guineas a week.’
‘When was that?’ asked Davies. Kitty was snoring on the back seat.
‘Nineteen thirty-two,’ Mod responded turning to the flyleaf of the guide book. ‘It was the only one left. The up-to-date guides had all been stolen. People tend to plan their holidays at this time of the year.’
He folded the book seriously. ‘Do you know what else has been purloined from the library, Dangerous?’ he said. ‘The hat stand. That fine Victorian piece. The thief simply walked in and carried it off. Nobody saw it go.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ commented Davies. ‘Everybody’s snoozing.’
‘Studying,’ corrected Mod. He sniffed towards the windscreen and narrowed his eyes. ‘Bournemouth straight ahead,’ he intoned.
‘It had better be,’ responded Davies. ‘We’re on the motorway.’
Mod looked discomfited. ‘Things change so much,’ he grumbled. ‘And one tends to become very parochial.’
‘When one hasn’t been out of Willesden for five years.’ Davies was pleased with the car. It sang as though happy to be on the road again, oblivious as its driver to the tooting annoyance of overtaking trucks and coaches.
Basingstoke and Winchester went by. After the Southampton Docks exit the road became dual carriageway across open moorland, the brown and emerald of winter in the New Forest. They turned the car off at the Rufus Stone, where King Rufus was killed by an accidental arrow fired by one of his hunting party. Mod shook his head. ‘I still can’t accept it, Dangerous,’ he said. It was a bright, nearly a spring, day with filtering sunlight through the oaks.
‘What’s that?’ asked Davies who was walking Kitty among the trees.
‘An accident,’ sighed Mod. ‘Why, I ask myself, was the culprit safe in France so swiftly?’ He waved a finger. ‘The King’s death was common knowledge in certain religious quarters, the day before it happened.’
The Complete Dangerous Davies Page 55
