Last Detective

by Thomas, Leslie

  The upper floors, while mostly curtained and closed, with lights behind them at this time of evening, had the occasionally noteworthy difference. There were the premises of Madame Tarantella Phelps-Smith, High Class Fortunes Told, the Winged Victory Ex-Servicemen’s Club, the ubiquitous snooker hall and the Quaker Meeting Room, undoubtedly reeking with the rising odours of the Take-away-Curry shop underneath.

  The husky evening itself was layered with odours—Guinness, chips, work and dirt. There was a municipal tree at the junction with Jubilee Road, one of the Victorian offshoots. It was donated by the Rotary Club—and had a plaque to prove it—to commemorate the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and, despite being protectively caged in an iron waistcoat, it was stricken as though by some long-term lightning.

  Davies walked the length of the High Street twice in forty minutes. It was busy with buses and homeward cars now, and with people scurrying from their work, thinking of freedom, food, television or possibly love. He ended his thoughtful patrol at The Babe in Arms and went into the elongated bar. Mod was predictably peering into a half pint, which he had purchased with his own money. He was glad to see Davies for he was anxious to know further about his private murder case and his glass was running low.

  ‘I’ve started,’ said Davies when they were drinking. ‘I’ve started on the case.’

  ‘How far have you got?’

  ‘Nowhere.’

  Mod nodded at his beer and at the logic of the reply. ‘Will you keep me informed, Dangerous?’ he asked. ‘I have a lot of time to think, you know. I may just come up with something.’

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ promised Davies. He glanced up and down the bar. ‘She’s not in then? Flamenco Fanny.’

  ‘No,’ confirmed Mod. ‘I think she must have broken her ankle last night when she fell down. With any luck.’

  The door opened on cue and the rough woman, her untidy leg in a hammerhead of plaster-of-Paris, stumped in supported by a massive walking stick. ‘Olé!’ she cried.

  ‘Oshit,’ said Davies.

  Even with the annoyance of the rough woman stumping around all night in the bar on her enormous plaster cast it was only with some difficulty that Davies managed to entice Mod to leave and to walk with him to the canal bank.

  ‘If I am to be your Dr Watson, I wish you could arrange for our investigations to be outside drinking hours,’ complained Mod. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, I can’t see how any clues to this conundrum—there, I said it too, beered as I am—are going to be lying around by the canal twenty-five years after the event.’

  A man loitering in a shop doorway opposite saw them leave the bar and, after allowing them fifty yards’ clearance, walked in the shadows behind. He watched them make for the entrance to the alley between the pawnbroker’s and the massage parlour, then hurried down a service road alongside some neighbouring shops and climbed a fence to reach the canal bank. He ran through the towpath mud, passed a man fishing in the dead of night, and turned up the alley from the canal end. Davies and Mod were wandering towards him.

  ‘It’s not clues, it’s geography I want to be sure about,’ Davies was saying patiently. ‘On her way home she might have cycled down this cut and gone along the towpath to the road bridge. I just want to cover the ground, that’s all.’

  The man who had followed them now approached from the foot of the alley. They looked up from their talk and saw him come, coat-collared, towards them. Davies felt an instinctive touch of nervousness as the silhouette came nearer, as though his new role had given a sharper edge. They had almost to touch to pass each other and, as people do in such awkward circumstances they muttered almost into each other’s faces as they passed.

  ‘Good-night,’ said Davies.

  ‘Nighty-night,’ added Mod.

  ‘Night,’ responded the man, a short blast of beer emitting with the word. Davies saw nothing more of him than a pale triangle of face jutting from the collar and pinpoint eyes squinting through rudimentary spectacles. The man had gone to the upper end of the alley before Davies realized that there were no lenses in those glasses.

  The alley performed a mile curve and beyond the angle the limp lamplit water of the canal came into their view. The damp, rotten smell was at once heavier. They stood and took in the confined scene. If the girl had gone that way she would have had that same view in the same light as she rode carefully on her bicycle. The helmeted lamp had hovered above the bridge for many years. It was as if it had lost something in the water and was taking a long time to find it.

  Davies and Mod were contemplating the chill view, hearing the bored glugging of the water against its old banks when, dramatically, a figure ascended from behind the elevated hedge on their right. They jumped like a pair of ponies. The figure squeaked nervously. ‘Oh…oh…ever so sorry, mates…’ he said eventually. He stood upright against the hedge, five feet above them because of the variant in the ground levels. Davies and Mod regarded him as they would have regarded the appearance of Satan. Davies contained his voice. ‘Don’t worry,’ he laughed hollowly. ‘Didn’t see you there, that’s all. Made us jump.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t, not from down there,’ acknowledged the man. ‘Completely hidden from down there I am, I bet.’ He performed a brief demonstration crouching behind the hedge and calling to them. ‘There, can you see me now?’

  ‘No, not a thing. Can’t see you at all,’ obliged Davies.

  ‘What you doing anyway?’ inquired Mod, more to the point.

  ‘The allotment,’ said the man, rising and nodding over his shoulder into the vacant darkness. ‘Only chance I’ve got of getting down here. By the time I get home from work and that. I’m just getting a few veg.’

  ‘Good job you know where everything is,’ observed Davies.

  ‘All in nice straight lines,’ said the man. ‘I’ve got a torch but the batteries went. I’ve done now, anyway. Finished.’

  They continued looking up at him. He was like a politician with a small audience.

  ‘Any good, these allotments?’ asked Davies.

  ‘Not bad. Not as good as the power station plots, but not bad either. Here it’s always dampish see. Because of the canal. But the power station stuff gets the spray from the cooling towers. But you get good stuff in both.’ He began to heave a sack over the hedge. Davies and then Mod moved forward and helped him to bring it to the ground. He thanked them, wished them a cheerful good-night, then shouldered the sack and went towards the top of the alley. ‘He must have a lot of mouths to feed,’ observed Mod.

  They continued to the end of the cut, the air closing damper with each step. The canal water, near black by day, was in its night-time guise appearing in the streaky light of the lamp as limpid as a tropical pool. Sitting on the bank, quite close to the bridge, was Father Harvey, the priest of St Fridewide’s. He was fishing.

  ‘Now I’ve seen the lot,’ Davies said to him. ‘Up there was a chap digging his allotment in the dark, and now you fishing. Caught anything?’

  ‘If I do I’ll have you as witness to a holy miracle,’ murmured the priest. ‘I am only seeking peace. Unfortunately canal banks have become areas of suspicion and a bachelor priest might find it embarrassing to merely walk or stand along here at night. So I fish.’

  Davies grinned in the dark. ‘I was thinking of nicking you for poaching, Father,’ he said.

  ‘Chessus, now, I never thought of that,’ replied the priest. ‘I suppose I could always plead that I was fishing for souls.’

  ‘You’d need communion bread for bait,’ suggested Mod. Davies told Father Harvey who Mod was and the Father nodded up and Mod nodded down.

  ‘We passed a man up there in the alley who was wearing glasses with no lenses in them,’ said Davies.

  He heard the priest sniff. ‘There’s a lot of poverty about,’ he observed.

  ‘Or maybe it was a disguise.’

  ‘It could have been that,’ agreed Father Harvey. ‘There’s that place of degradation the council have allowed t
hem to open at the top of the alley—the so-called “massage parlour”. Hell masquerading as hygiene. He might have been going there and not wanting anyone to recognize him. The pawnshop and the massage parlour are both full of the unredeemed.’

  ‘Good point. You should be in the force.’

  ‘Thank you, my son,’ said the priest laconically. They were silent for a while watching the deadpan water as though expecting a pike to bite at any moment. Then the priest said ‘I take it you haven’t found out who burned down my confessional box?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Davies. ‘We haven’t got very far on that one. But I don’t see it as an act of desecration.’ He could see the priest’s nose profiled like a triangle.

  ‘I might have told my flock it was a sign from Heaven, or Hell,’ said the priest. ‘But experience tells me it was boys smoking in there.’

  ‘It won’t be easy to find out,’ interpolated Mod, ‘You won’t get it out of them at Confession because you haven’t got a confessional box. It’s like the chicken and the egg.’

  The priest showed no outward reaction. He appeared to be trying to analyze something in the water. ‘You know, Dangerous,’ he said coming to a conclusion, not turning his head. ‘I can’t help thinking that you’re not really cut out for being a detective. If you could cut your drinking by half, I’d suggest the priesthood.’

  ‘That’s a pretty general opinion,’ agreed Davies, with doleful sportsmanship. ‘But, it happens, I am on an important inquiry at present.’

  ‘Oh, and what would that be? Or can you tell?’

  ‘I think I can. After all you’re a man of secrets.’

  ‘It goes with the job,’ agreed the priest.

  Davies crouched on the dank bank. Mod remained standing as though keeping watch. Davies asked: ‘Father, do you remember Celia Norris?’

  ‘Celia Norris,’ nodded the priest. ‘The girl was apparently murdered. A long time ago.’

  ‘Twenty-five years,’ said Davies. ‘I’ve reopened the case.’

  ‘Chessus,’ said Father Harvey. ‘It was when I first came here. In fact I only knew the girl a few weeks. I can’t even remember her face.’

  Davies could. ‘It was never cleared up,’ he said ‘It was just left.’

  ‘You didn’t come down here looking for footprints, by any chance, did you?’ asked the priest.

  ‘Not quite. But I thought I would just wander along and see if I could get any ideas.’

  ‘She was at the youth club. And they never found anything,’ said the priest.

  ‘Her clothes,’ said Davies. ‘They found those. Except her…underpants.’

  ‘Ah, her knickers,’ agreed Father Harvey. ‘Yes, I recall that fact.’ He gave the fishing line a few ruminative jerks. ‘Perhaps, now, she wasn’t wearing any.’

  ‘Father!’ Davies said it. Mod began to whistle in the night.

  ‘Well, like I said just now, there’s a lot of poverty about. Twenty-five years ago it was no better.’

  Davies considered again the priest’s nose. In silhouette it appeared a lot longer than in daylight. ‘Do you know where Mrs Norris, her mother, lives these days?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, yes. Let me see. Hunter Street, by the power station. She still comes to church, sometimes.’

  ‘Dave Boot,’ said Davies. ‘Remember Dave Boot, the youth club man, Father? What was he like?’

  ‘Muscles,’ said Father Harvey decisively. ‘All muscles. He did all this training nonsense. Chessus, he used to make me feel envious. I had a few muscles myself in those days, but I was required to hide them under my cassock. One of the sacrifices of spiritual life, you see. But there were times, I must confess when I would have swopped all the vestments of a bishop for a string vest.‘

  Davies laughed sombrely in the dark. Mod, who did not have a top coat, shuffled in the cold. Davies took the hint.

  ‘We’ll be going then, Father,’ said Davies.

  ‘Right you are,’ sniffed the priest. ‘I wish you well with your mouldy old murder. This one’s not only dead, it’s been dead a long time. Cold ashes, Dangerous, cold ashes. You might find it’s better left like that.’

  ‘It’s not an official investigation,’ said Davies. ‘I am doing it myself. In my own time.’

  ‘Like a hobby?’ said the priest, still watching the water.

  ‘Yes, you could say that. Like a hobby.’

  Chapter Five

  He began to rake the cold ashes by going to Hunter Street. It was one of the streets grouped around the cooling towers of the power station, midgets crowding giants. The stream and vapour from the towers kept it a perpetual rainy day. But it had compensations, for when the sun came out it filled the damp, melancholy streets with rainbows.

  Davies stood at the front of the terraced house, the same as all the others but more in need of a paint. The door hung like a jaw. Months before someone had planted a Christmas tree in the patch of front garden hoping to defy God and make it grow. God had won. It stood brittle, brown, shivering at the first fingering of another autumn. Davies knocked at the door and several pieces of paint fell off. It appeared that a whole system of locks was undone before the thin woman’s face appeared.

  ‘What d’you want?’

  ‘Mrs Norris?’

  ‘That’s right. What d’you want?’

  ‘I’ve…I’ve come to have a talk with you, if I can. About your daughter.’

  ‘Josie. What’s Josie done?’

  ‘No. Not Josie. Celia.’

  The eyes seemed to sprout quickly from the face.

  ‘Celia?’ she whispered. ‘Who are you then?’

  ‘I’m a policeman.’

  ‘You’ve…have you…found our Celia?’

  ‘No. No we haven’t.’

  ‘Well go and have another look,’ she said suddenly and bitterly. ‘Bugger off.’

  The door slammed resoundingly in his face and several more pieces of paint fell off. He backed away because he was unsure what to do next. If a door were shut during an official investigation there were methods of opening it again, even if it meant asking politely. But when it was just a hobby it was more difficult.

  He went out of the gate and began to walk thoughtfully along the street. Approaching him from the power station end appeared a wobbling motor scooter. It skidded noisily, slid by him and then was backed up. It was ridden by a girl, small and dark. She pulled her head out of her yellow crash helmet which had ‘Stop Development in Buenos Aires’ written on it, and shook her hair. She only needed the ice-cream blob on her chin.

  ‘Josie,’ said Davies. ‘You’re Josie Norris.’

  ‘You scored,’ she said. ‘Who are you? I saw you coming from our gate.’

  ‘I’m a policeman,’ he said apologetically. ‘Detective Constable Davies. Your mum just threw me out.’

  ‘She would do,’ nodded the girl confidently. ‘Are you going to nick the old man? He said he was considering going straight.’

  ‘No. It’s nothing to do with your father. It’s Celia.’

  ‘Christ,’ she breathed. ‘You haven’t found something?’

  ‘No. But I’m hoping to.’

  ‘Hoping? Hoping?’ she sounded incredulous. ‘And I’m hoping to do a straight swop with this scooter for a new Rolls Royce. When I’m eighteen.’

  ‘How long is that?’

  ‘Eight months and three days. I’m free then. You’re free when you’re eighteen now.’

  ‘So I’m told. I seemed to have missed it.’

  ‘You want to chat to my mum, do you?’

  ‘Yes. Will you fix it?’

  ‘You’re serious about it,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I mean you’re not going to bugger her about and then just drop it again. She’s had enough already.’

  ‘I’m serious,’ nodded Davies. He hesitated and then said: ‘I don’t think it was ever properly investigated.’

  ‘Why is it being investigated now?’

  He decided to lie. ‘New information. A man in prison has t
alked.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  She looked at him on the angle. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll get her to meet you. There’s a Lyons Caff in the High Street, just by the florists.’

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘Make it three o’clock in there. She shut the door on you because my dad’s at home, I expect. But she’ll be there.’ She regarded him squarely, a small, confident face protruding from a yellow oilskin jacket. ‘But, mister…promise you won’t screw her up.’

  ‘Promise,’ said Davies.

  The afternoon closed early as though it were anxious to be quit for the day. Drizzle, the real thing from the sky, not from the cooling towers, licked the shop windows in the High Street and buses shushed by on their way to Cricklewood; Davies loitered across the road from the café, imagining that he merged with the background shadow, his face almost buried by the bowsprit of his overcoat. He felt quaintly confident in his obscurity and was shaken when the three apparent strangers wished him good-afternoon, by name. Mrs Norris approached, unseen and, unerringly picking him out, announced: ‘I’m here.’

  Davies, disgruntled, followed her across the rainy road, and into the café. She indicated that she was running the situation by nodding him towards a corner table. Obediently he shuffled off to the marble slab while she joined the self-service line. He watched her from his distance. She had been tall but, although she was only in her fifties, her back was beginning to bend. The face was fatigued and fixed, looking straight at the neck of the woman before her in the queue, her eyes flicking around occasionally but only briefly before returning to the stare. Davies sat and opened the buttons of his coat. An Indian at the next table ate Heinz spaghetti and double chips and was anointing it with whorls of brown sauce. He sang quietly to himself, some song doubtless born in cool faraway hills, interrupting the plaint to slurp loudly from his cup.