Last Detective

by Thomas, Leslie

  Davies grimaced. He pushed the beaker out of reach across the table so that he would not be moved to pick it up again. Then he leaned again towards Boot, confidingly. ‘Statements are just sort of catalogues of fact, see. I did this at such and such a time, and then I did that. They’re not very filling, if you know what I mean, Mr Boot. A lot of bones and not much meat. They never tell you how people feel. I want to find out that. How they felt about Celia Norris. How did you feel about her?’

  ‘Feel?’ Boot shrugged and spread his hands. ‘Nothing. Nothing at all. She was just a kid at the youth club.’

  ‘You didn’t fancy her then?’

  Boot glared. ‘Sod off, I’m going to get my solicitor. Like I said. I should have before.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ reassured Davies. ‘I’m going now. I only wanted to have a look at you. Just let me ask you one more thing before I’m off.’

  Boot sulked and said nothing but Davies pretended not to notice.

  ‘How would you have described her behaviour, Celia’s, sexually? She was seventeen. Do you think she was a virgin?’

  Surprisingly, Boot thought about it. ‘I don’t know about her virginity, I’m sure. They used to keep it longer it those days, didn’t they.’

  ‘So I understand.’

  ‘Yes, so do I. But they were all full of it. You know… flirty.’

  ‘Flirty,’ smiled Davies. ‘Ah, Mr Boot, that’s a lovely old-fashioned word, I think I’ll write that down.’ He took out his notebook carefully, while Boot watched impatiently, and wrote down ‘flirty’ in capital letters and with great care. He stood back and considered it as though it were some prize etching. ‘Flirty,’ he repeated. ‘Lovely.’

  ‘Well, she was,’ said Boot, unhappy that he had said anything, but somehow drawn to continue. ‘We used to say they were PTs didn’t we, Mr Davies? Prick teasers.’

  ‘Did we!’ exploded Davies. ‘Did we now? And why should we say that? Prick teasers. Just a minute, I want to write that down too.’ Boot swallowed heavily as Davies wrote the words painstakingly beneath the word ‘flirty’. He regarded the phrase as he had regarded the single word. ‘My goodness,’ he said mildly. ‘That takes you back, doesn’t it, Mr Boot? It really takes you back.’

  ‘Not me, personally,’ muttered Boot. ‘It was just a saying at the time. You must know that.’

  ‘Flirty prick teasers,’ mused Davies rubbing his chin. ‘Celia Norris.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Boot stubbornly. ‘Celia Norris.’

  ‘And why would you say that about her?’

  ‘Because I’ve got eyes,’ said Boot desperately. ‘I could see what she was like, couldn’t I? She had a boyfriend there…’

  ‘Bill Lind,’ prompted Davies. ‘Good old Bill Lind.’

  Boot stared at him hard. ‘That’s him. That poor bugger used to go crazy. But they were all the same, those girls. Today at least, they’re honest. They give something.’

  ‘Do they?’ asked Davies, his eyebrows ascending.

  ‘Surely even you know that. The kids now are more straightforward about sex and that. They don’t have the frustrations we used to have.’

  ‘Didn’t we just, Mr Boot,’ said Davies. He looked again at the three words he had written, studying them as though he thought they might be an anagram.

  ‘Flirty old Celia Norris,’ he grinned.

  ‘Flirty Celia Norris,’ nodded Boot savagely.

  ‘And Ena Brown,’ said Davies. ‘Flirty Ena Brown?’ There was no vestige of colour in Boot’s face now.

  ‘Ena Brown,’ he muttered. ‘Her as well.’

  At The Babe in Arms a representative of the Spanish Tourist Office was making a presentation to the rough woman who had broken her ankle while dancing to ‘Viva España’. It was followed by a similar presentation from the juke box company. The ceremony was attended by press representatives and embryo celebrities who had come to try and get their pictures in the newspapers. The landlord beamed on the scene.

  Davies and Mod left the bar early and in disgust, for the evening meal at ‘Bali Hi’, Furtman Gardens. ‘I think I would prefer the silence of that lonely room to the false glamour we witnessed back there,’ said Mod sorrowfully as they walked down Furtman Gardens. ‘Vanity, vanity, all is vanity and publicity.’

  ‘Commerce,’ corrected Davies. He had been telling Mod about his visit to Dave Boot. ‘Can you imagine a shop like that? Floor to ceiling with sexual fantasy.’

  ‘And he probably does very nicely from it too,’ nodded Mod ‘They say that in Arabia there are men who sell shade to pilgrims walking that hot road to Mecca. They put up an awning or rent a bit of wall and they charge people to stand in the shade for a few minutes. It’s supply and demand.’

  At ‘Bali Hi’ they found a new lodger established at the table, an Indian, Mr Patel, who was soon engaged by Mod who asked about tribal customs of the North-West Frontier about which Mr Patel knew nothing since he came from Tottenham. Thin Minnie Banks squeaked girlishly at the error but Mr Smeeton, on this evening disguised as a harlequin, showed renewed interest.

  ‘One of my acts is a sort of conjuring extravaganza,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t mind a bloke in a turban to be Gilly-Gilly, the funny assistant. Would that interest you?’

  Mr Patel politely refused the offer on the grounds that he was busy with his job as a lecturer in Metallurgy and he did not possess a turban anyway. He apologized that he knew nothing of the tribal customs on the North-West Frontier.

  This was digested in uncomfortable silence. Doris knocked her fork on the floor and they all jumped. Davies said diplomatically: ‘I think the tribal customs of North West London are probably a good deal more primitive.’

  ‘He’s a detective,’ said Mr Smeeton caustically, nodding his harlequin head towards Davies. ‘But he’s no bloody good. Not from what we hear, anyway.’

  Mr Patel smiled agreeably. ‘It is very nice to be in a household where everybody speaks so frankly.’

  ‘Detective!’ snorted Mrs Fulljames, appearing from her kitchen cavern with a cauldron of stew. ‘Detective!’ The pot seemed to be pulling her along like a steam engine.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve lost another bed,’ observed Davies wearily.

  ‘No. But the other one hasn’t been found either,’ she sniffed. ‘Antique. And I suppose you slept all through the racket last night. All the screams and everything. It woke the whole street up but not you.’

  ‘What did I miss last night?’

  ‘Somebody tied a horse to Mrs Connelly’s door knocker. Somebody’s idea of a joke.’

  A glance each from Mod and Davies crept across the table.

  ‘A horse?’ protested Davies. ‘I’m a policeman, not a groom.’

  ‘It was a crime,’ said Mrs Fulljames firmly, slopping out the lamb stew. Davies saw Mr Patel looking at it doubtfully. So did Mod. ‘It’s quite all right, Mr. Patel,’ said Mod, his voice booming ghostlike through vapour. ‘It’s sheep not sacred cow.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you,’ muttered Mr Patel.

  ‘The upset!’ said Mrs Fulljames, still pursuing the horse. ‘It kept banging on Mrs Connelly’s door knocker and neighing or whinnying or whatever they do. And that poor woman came down in her nightdress and the animal walked straight into her front hall. Petrified she was, and who can blame her?’

  ‘Who indeed,’ said Davies, staring into the volcanic stew.

  ‘Well you didn’t hear it,’ complained Doris. ‘People miles away must have heard it, all that screaming and the horse making a terrible noise. But not you!’

  ‘It went right in, right in the hall,’ said Mrs Fulljames, sitting down with her plate sending its veil to her face. The meal was beginning to resemble a seance. ‘And it trod on Mr Connelly’s foot when he came down to see what was going on. He’s off work for a month.’

  ‘A month at least, knowing Mr Connelly,’ commented Davies. ‘What did they do with the horse, shoot it?’

  ‘It belongs to that terrible man down the town, Scr
ibbens isn’t it? The rag-and-bone merchant. They got him to come and take it back. Disgusting business altogether. Poor woman.’

  They paused to eat and the steam subsided as they emptied their plates. Eventually Mr Patel said: ‘A detective, Mr Davies, most interesting, most. And what, if it is possible to divulge, are you investigating at this moment?’

  ‘Apart from my stolen bed,’ sniffed Mrs Fulljames.

  ‘Well,’ Davies hesitated. ‘A sort of missing person.’

  It was early closing day but Antoinette (Paris Switzerland and Hemel Hempstead) Ladies’ Hairdressers remained stubbornly open. Davies loitered in the lee of a telephone box across the street until Josie came out for her lunch at two o’clock. He was, as usual, disconcerted when she immediately walked across the road to him.

  ‘How did you spot me?’ he inquired unhappily.

  ‘Spot you? Blimey, half the shop saw you,’ she laughed. ‘You’d be surprised how well-known you are in these parts, Dangerous. Marie—that’s my friend in the salon—you nicked her brother for stealing scrap metal a couple of years ago, but he got off because of some technicality. You’d lost your notes or something.’

  Davies sighed. ‘I seem to remember that,’ he admitted.

  ‘They do, too. Marie said they still have a good laugh about it.’

  ‘Thanks.’ They had begun to walk apparently aimlessly along the shut street.

  ‘Then the lady whose perm we were doing said you’d found her front door swinging open one night and you walked in and her old man smashed you over the head with a chair, because he thought you was a burglar.’

  ‘Yes, I recall that too. He broke the chair.’

  ‘Bertha—that’s Antoinette—and most of the customers and staff knew you in some way or another. Didn’t you see them crowding to the windows to look at you trying to hide behind that phone box?’

  ‘Well, I did think you had rather a big crowd in there for a small place,’ admitted Davies. ‘I thought it was your busy morning, that’s all.’

  ‘You talked to my mum, didn’t you,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She trusts you, she does. Are you still working on the thing about our Celia?’

  Davies arched his eyebrows. ‘Of course I am. I’ve only been on it a few days.’

  ‘What’s that after twenty five years?’ shrugged Josie. ‘I’ve got some sandwiches. I was going to get a bus and sit up by the Welsh Harp. My scooter’s got a puncture. I’m going by the reservoir. As it’s a decent day.’

  It was too. There had been a smattering of October sun through the morning and, miraculously, it now grinned over the entire sky.

  ‘You can come as well if you like, Dangerous,’ said Josie. ‘I won’t eat all my sandwiches myself.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. They walked along the closed faces of the shops. The white bodices of the cooling towers looked strangely clean in the sunshine. They were comfortable in each other’s company. The bus arrived opportunely and they boarded it, sitting without speaking on the cross-seats on the lower deck. They reached the Welsh Harp, a shapely lake shining benignly beyond the reach of the factory fumes. Three small sailing dinghies, one with red sails, swam across its easy surface. Davies and Josie walked to a seat overlooking the water and sat down. She opened a packet of sandwiches and gave him one. It was cheese and pickle.

  ‘Your mother,’ said Davies through his bread. ‘She’s never got over it, has she?’

  ‘You don’t have to be Maigret to see that,’ she commented, but not directly at him. ‘She’ll never get it off her mind. When the anniversary comes round she’s almost mental.’ She paused as though weighing up whether to add something. She decided she would. ‘It sounds a silly thing to say, I know,’ she ventured. ‘But it’s…it’s almost, sort of, given her something to live for.’

  Davies glanced sideways at her and whistled softly to himself. ‘That’s a strange remark,’ he said.

  ‘I said it was, didn’t I,’ she pointed out. ‘But it has, Dangerous…You don’t mind me calling you that, do you? What’s your proper first name?’

  ‘Percival,’ he lied.

  She regarded him seriously. ‘Dangerous…’ she said.

  She bit fiercely into her sandwich. She had a sharply pretty face and gentle hair. She had opened her coat and her small breasts just touched the surface of her sweater. The sun blew across her colourless urban face.

  ‘Yes, Josie?’ he said.

  ‘Dangerous, you really want to do this, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Why? I mean, why all of a sudden? I don’t believe all that cobblers about some bloke talking in prison, even if my mum does.’

  ‘I don’t like to see something left,’ he replied defensively. ‘Just abandoned. Don’t you think I ought to find out?’ He hesitated. ‘If I can.’

  ‘Who is it in aid of, Dangerous?’ she asked quietly. She opened the top slice of her sandwich and said to herself. ‘No pickle in this one.’ She returned her small face to him. ‘Who is it for?’ she repeated. ‘Is it for Celia or my mum? Or is it for you?’

  He felt a shaft of guilt. ‘It’s not for anybody,’ he protested. ‘All I know is that somebody is walking about free today—with blood on their hands.’

  ‘Dried blood,’ she sniffed. ‘He’ll hardly remember it now. Have you ever done a murder case before?’

  ‘No.’ He did not look at her. ‘This is the first.’

  ‘Did your inspector, or whoever it is, tell you to do it? Or are you just doing it off your own bat?’

  ‘On my own,’ he mumbled. He examined the sandwich in his hand and, carefully selecting a site, bit into it.

  ‘I thought so,’ she said. ‘It’s like a hobby, then.’

  Father Harvey had said that. The repetition of the word stung him.

  ‘It’s not a hobby!’ he said angrily. ‘I’m going to find out who killed Celia!’

  ‘Don’t get out of your bloody pram,’ said Josie. She was looking at him calmly. ‘I don’t know whether it’s going to make anyone better off, that’s all. I might as well tell you, I’d have nothing to do with it. But my mum seems to think you can do something.’ She looked up and then held his sleeve. ‘Christ,’ she said. ‘That little boat’s turned over, Dangerous. The bloke’s in the water.’

  ‘They do it all the time,’ answered Davies, looking up. ‘People ring us and the fire brigade and God knows who else. But we tell them not to worry because it’s part of the sport. They enjoy it.’

  ‘You leave them be, then,’ she said pointedly.

  ‘We do,’ he said. ‘One day one of them will drown and everybody will moan and say why didn’t we do anything.’

  She sighed sadly and threw a whole sandwich at a loitering bird. It flew away in fright, but then returned cautiously, hardly able to believe its luck. ‘How far have you got?’ she said. ‘Anywhere?’

  ‘Bits and pieces,’ he shrugged. ‘It will take a while. Do you want to help me?’

  She eased her eyes. ‘All right. But don’t let it bugger up my mother, will you. She’s had twenty-five years of it.’ She seemed undecided whether to tell him something. ‘Even now, and this sounds mad I know, even now she seems to think that somehow you’re going to bring Celia back—alive!’

  ‘Oh Christ, no.’

  ‘Oh Christ, yes,’ she said. ‘You can see what I’m getting at. I was a sort of replacement for her, you see. I’m a sort of second-hand Celia. They had another baby after she went but it was stillborn. That didn’t help.’

  ‘I bet,’ nodded Davies. The man had righted his dinghy and was climbing back aboard. He was wearing yellow oilskins and a life-jacket. Davies said, ‘You said a funny thing about your mother…’

  ‘About Celia giving her something to live for? Yes, it sounds funny, I know, but that’s just how it seems sometimes. If it had not happened, her disappearing, Celia would have grown up like anybody else, got married and cleared off. In a way she’s been much more of a
daughter for my mum, since she’s been dead. If she is dead. No matter what I do, Dangerous, I’ll never make up for her.’

  He patted her hand with his half-eaten sandwich. ‘I see,’ he nodded. She smiled in her young way. The sun was still on them. ‘It’s a pity you never knew Celia,’ he added.

  ‘Knew her!’ Her laugh came out bitterly. ‘I’ve spent my whole life with her, mate.’

  ‘You don’t like her very much, do you?’

  ‘There’s nothing to like or dislike. You can’t dislike a ghost. I never saw her, did I, or ’eard her speak. She’s just a name to me. But it’s a name that keeps coming up if you know what I mean. If my mum could do a swop, me for our Celia, she’d have ’er every time. I’m stuck with that, see.’

  Davies nodded. ‘I see.’ He waited. ‘Do you think your mum knows who did it?’

  ‘I think she thinks she does,’ said Josie wiping a stray bean from her chin.

  ‘How about Cecil Ramscar, for a start?’

  ‘She’s never said as much.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Christ knows. I wasn’t around twenty-five years ago. But he could have. He sent a wreath.’

  Chapter Seven

  He went back to the police station thinking about Ramscar. When he reached there he discovered that the Ramscar file had been locked in a cupboard with the divisional sporting trophies, the supply of tea bags and the tear-gas canisters. The keys were with an officer who was attending the magistrates’ court so Davies walked around there.

  It was a busy day in the court and as was usual a lot of ordinary innocent people had come in to sit and watch for a while. There were loaded shopping baskets and loaded expressions in the public seats. He entered as stealthily as he could, falling over a wheelbarrow which was being used as an exhibit in the case being heard. Everyone turned to see him. The public laughed, the police and the magistrates sighed, the man in the dock pointed a stare at him, a look threaded with uncertainty. Davies nervously recognized him as the man he had helped with the sack of vegetables over the allotment hedge a few nights previously. He sidled out of the accused’s sight.