Last Detective

by Thomas, Leslie

  Davies dismissed it. ‘I’m investigating the disappearance and presumed death of Celia Norris,’ he said formally. ‘Will you tell me what the events of that day were.’

  Norris leaned on the bridge and gaped at the unremarkable canal.

  ‘What happened that day?’

  ‘It was when I was working for a car firm. In the West End,’ said Norris patiently. ‘I saw her in the morning just before I went to work and I didn’t see her again. That’s all. I told the coppers everything at the time. But they’ve never done nothing, have they?’

  His voice had subsided and the final words came out wistfully. Davies said: ‘We’re still trying. That’s why I want to see Ramscar.’

  ‘Back to him,’ said Norris, his suspicion returning at once. ‘You’d rather see Cecil than anything, wouldn’t you? This whole thing wouldn’t be some copper’s plan to get at Cecil, would it? You wouldn’t be using our Celia to try and get him, by any chance?’

  To his amazement Davies saw that Norris’s small frame was flooding with emotion. His face shook. Suddenly he turned away and leaned on the parapet of the bridge, put his head in his elbows and wept. Embarrassed, Davies stood back. He pushed out a tentative hand and then withdrew it. Norris continued to sob.

  A small girl and an older boy appeared on the towpath and began to walk across the bridge. When they saw Norris they stopped and regarded him with huge interest. Davies made ineffectual movements with his hands.

  ‘What’s the matter wiv ’im then, mister?’ asked the boy. The little girl had curved over and was now arched under Norris’s bent body attempting to look up into his face. It was as though she were peering up a chimney.

  ‘He’s upset,’ mumbled Davies. ‘You two run along.’

  ‘What’s he upset for?’ inquired the girl. She was smaller than the boy, but she had jam on her face and she looked determined.

  Davies shrugged. ‘He’s lost something precious in the canal,’ he said unthinkingly.

  Norris looked up slowly. His eyes were blood red, his skin puffed and wet. ‘I suppose you think that’s bloody funny, don’t you?’ he said. ‘Copper.’

  Chapter Eight

  Gladstone Heights was a vantage point above a stiff hill at the back of the town. The council flats at its brow had a view and, as though to celebrate their prestige, the housewives had washing hanging like banners and bunting high up there, exalted, where the air was almost clear.

  Arrayed below were all the streets, curving like fan vaulting, the dull blade of the canal cut through the hunched houses, the factories making plastics, steels and alloys, paint and fertilizer, cosmetics and baked beans. Each added its own puff of smoke to the congested sky, each ground relentlessly grafting and grubby. Particles of grit performed a saraband above it all.

  The flats—for some environmental reason—could only be reached by a steep footpath, the road terminating far below. Davies left the Lagonda and Kitty on the lower slope and began to walk. He bent like a large sherpa as he tackled the tarmac hill. The view expanded with every pace. It was said that Mr Gladstone, when Prime Minister, used to come to this spot for solace and rural refreshment. Now the fields and country trees did not begin for another ten miles.

  Ena and William Lind lived on the crown of Gladstone Heights. It was Davies’s second ascent. The first time there had been no one in their flat and he descended disconsolately on the steep road, thinking that a watchman’s hut in telephone communication with the summit might be a reasonable expense upon the ratepayers.

  This time he had, at least, the assurance that there was someone at home because he had carefully calculated the location of their flat among the piled windows and he saw now that, like a welcome lighthouse, there was illumination in the window. Davies thought how useful the situation would be for anyone wishing to send signals down into the town.

  As a compensation for the gradient walk, each block of flats had its lift and Davies waited gratefully on the bottom landing for it to descend. Also waiting was a man who complained of the wind that rifled through the concrete doors and corridors.

  ‘Sometimes up here,’ moaned the man, ‘you can actually ’ear it whining through your trousers. Whistles everywhere. What a place to put human beings, I ask you.’

  ‘It’s a long way,’ agreed Davies.

  ‘Stand up on this hill,’ the man pursued. ‘Face east and the wind blows straight from Russia and up your legs. There’s not another higher hill between here and the Ural Mountains. And this is where they put us.’

  The lift, like a biscuit tin, came down and opened. A woman got out with a shopping bag and pulled her collar up around her face before launching herself outside. She emitted a muffled reply to the old man’s greeting

  ‘That’s not, by any chance, Mrs Lind, is it?’ asked Davies halfway in the lift.

  ‘Mrs Lind? No, that’s Mrs Cotter. Mrs Lind’s better than that.’ The resident eyed him with fractionally more interest. ‘Going to call on Mrs Lind, are you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fourth floor, Number thirty-six,’ he said.

  Davies thanked him and got out at the fourth landing. As he left the lift the man muttered enigmatically: ‘Very nice too.’

  Nevertheless Davies was surprised when his doorbell ring was answered by a woman in a leopard-skin playsuit. Her face was carefully put together and her blonde hair assembled like a creamy confection. She idly held a large glass of crème de menthe in one hand and a copy of Vogue was tucked under her opposite arm. From the flat’s interior came a full, but not indelicate perfume, and the sound of Elgar. It was eleven o’clock on a Monday morning.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’ The tone was modulated cockney.

  ‘It is possible you may,’ replied Davies, straightening his own voice. ‘I am Detective Constable Davies. I wondered if I might take a little of your time.’

  ‘A detective!’ She coincided a purr and an exclamation. ‘How terrifically thrilling.’

  She performed a quick, practised sequence. She let him in, poked her face out of the door, looked once each way and withdrew. She saw that he had seen her.

  ‘Am I being followed?’ he inquired to relieve her embarrassment. She laughed throatfully. ‘You never know who’s poking their nose in your business around here,’ she answered. ‘Council places.’

  She led him into the room. It astonished him. Everywhere was lime green. The walls, the tons of curtains, the undulating three-piece suites, the carpet. On the settee was a green cat. ‘We call this the green room,’ she explained seriously. ‘Would you like a crème de menthe?’

  ‘Er,’ Davies hesitated. ‘Yes, yes. Thank you. It’s a bit early in the week but I will.’

  ‘It’s never too early,’ she smiled, going to a cocktail cabinet with a maw that lit musically when it was opened. ‘I love the Green Goddess.’

  ‘Yes, it’s nice,’ agreed Davies lamely.

  There was a colour television in a green casing in one corner and a stereo deck next to the cocktail cabinet. He looked around for the speakers but they were well concealed. ‘I think Elgar’s such an enigma,’ she said, returning with the drinks and jerking her head in the direction of the music.

  ‘Yes, I suppose he is. Was.’

  ‘Is,’ she said. ‘I sit here, listening, just listening, wondering what he is trying to say.’

  ‘My whole life’s like that,’ agreed Davies.

  ‘Ah yes, your police life.’ She moved closer and handed him the green glass. He could feel a warmth from her.

  ‘Let me take your coat,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I like a bit of fug in here. And you have to turn council heating right up before you can even feel it.’ He rolled off his great ungainly overcoat and she almost fell forward with the weight of it. She carried it to a bedroom that glowed pink as she entered it. ‘Did anyone see you come up?’ she called.

  ‘An old chap and a lady going shopping,’ he replied.

  She tutted as she re-entered the r
oom. ‘They’re so nosey, you see,’ she said. ‘Did they know that you were coming here? Actually here?’

  ‘Well, yes. The old chap. He directed me. Funny old boy. Said the wind comes straight from the Urals.’

  ‘Mr Bently,’ she said confidently. ‘Silly old sod. Excuse me, but he is. Goes around talking like a professor but he hasn’t a clue really. Straight from the Urals. What’s the Urals, anyway?’

  ‘Mountains in Russia, I understand,’ said Davies.

  ‘In that case he could be right,’ she acknowledged. ‘I heard his wife going on about it but she’s as ignorant as shit, if you’ll excuse me again. She was saying the wind came from the urinals. Anyway he saw you.’

  ‘I’m afraid he did.’

  ‘It’ll be all over the flats by tonight,’ she said confidently. ‘No privacy. Why don’t we sit down. Move over, Limey.’ She gave the cat a firm push.

  ‘Good name, Limey,’ offered Davies. He hesitated. ‘I’ve never seen a green cat before.’

  ‘It’s pricey to get him dyed,’ she sighed. ‘But he’s something to talk about when people come to dinner.’

  ‘I imagine,’ said Davies. He finished his drink. He was aware of her nearness on the settee. He sat with his hands on his knees, as though he were in a railway carriage. ‘Perhaps I’d better tell you why I am here,’ he said.

  ‘Ah yes,’ she replied as though it were only of minor importance. She smiled fully as he half turned to her. Her teeth were smooth and menacing, white versions of her finger nails. ‘I’m not afraid,’ she added. ‘I know I haven’t been wicked. Well, not in a way the police would be interested.’ She leaned forward abruptly and the heavy breasts, scarcely contained in the catsuit, bulged as though they wanted to view him also. ‘It’s nothing my husband has done, is it?’

  ‘No. He’s not in trouble.’

  ‘I thought not,’ she said with disappointment. ‘I don’t think he’s capable of getting into trouble. What’s it about then?’

  ‘Remember Celia Norris?’

  There was no quick reaction from her. He watched for it and all that occurred was a slight roll of the breasts. Her face was half away from him, however, staring at the cat which had begun to wash itself hysterically on the green carpet, perhaps in some forlorn foray to rid itself of its hue.

  ‘The police are not still raking around with that?’ she commented eventually in the same assumed modulated tone. ‘That’s all a bit old hat now, isn’t it, Celia Norris?’

  Davies clasped his hands firmly before him like an insurance salesman trying to make a selling point. ‘Oh no, not really,’ he said. ‘Look at it this way—there’s somebody walking around free today who did away with that girl. I’m trying to find out who that person is.’

  ‘But it’s years!’ It sounded like exasperation. It was in her face, the lines suddenly cracking through the accurately applied make-up. Her arms she folded tightly in front of her in the manner of a washer-woman, pushing her breasts up towards her chin. ‘Years,’ she repeated, getting up and walking away from him across the room. ‘What good can it do now?’

  Davies elevated his eyes to see her standing above, confronting him. His steady expression stopped her. She sat down, not lightly, not with studied elegance, as she had done before, but with a heavy middle-aged clump.

  ‘It keeps coming up,’ she sighed. ‘And I suppose it always will keep bleeding well coming up.’

  ‘Until it’s solved,’ observed Davies.

  ‘All right, have it your way. Until it’s solved.’

  ‘It came up a couple of years ago, didn’t it?’ he pointed out quietly. ‘In the newspaper.’

  ‘That. Yes, that’s right. She hesitated. ‘Well they offered me two hundred quid and I jumped at it. He went mad of course, my husband. But then he would. He’s such a wooden bastard, you know.’

  ‘No I didn’t.’

  ‘Oh Christ, him. You’ve never met anybody like him. If he picked his nose it would be on his conscience for life.’

  Davies was watching the cat. It had finished its desperate licking and was now running its green tongue around its chops.

  ‘Your husband, Bill, that is…’

  ‘William,’ she corrected purposefully. ‘He likes to be called William. See what I mean?’

  ‘Yes, I see. Well, William Lind, your husband. When you were all in your teens, those few years ago, he was Celia Norris’s boyfriend, wasn’t he?’

  She nodded. ‘For what it was worth.’ She laughed sharply. ‘She don’t know what a lucky escape she had.’ Immediately she glanced guiltily at him. ‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ she said.

  ‘Was he always so…wooden?’

  ‘Yes, always. Even as a kid he was a prissy bugger.’

  ‘But you married him. Didn’t you have a baby?’

  She smiled a pale smile. ‘You’ve been checking up, haven’t you. I lost the baby. I was always a loser.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m stupid,’ he said, embarrassed.

  ‘That’s all right,’ she sighed. ‘Anyway, I married him like you say. I knew what he was like but I thought he had a bit up top, you know, as well. Brains. I thought he might get somewhere. Make a life a bit comfortable.’

  ‘And he hasn’t?’

  ‘Ha!’ The snort was almost masculine. ‘If you call a capstan operator “getting somewhere”.’

  Glancing at his glass Davies was moderately surprised to see that he had finished his crème de menthe. She saw the action but made no offer to refill it. ‘I’ve got a friend coming in a minute,’ she said hinting that it was in explanation. ‘A girl friend, of course. Clare. We get up the West End three or four times a week. Walk around the shops, go to the pictures and that. It’s harmless enough.’

  ‘I would think it is,’ agreed Davies blandly, wondering why she had said it. ‘I won’t keep you long. Really I just wanted to ask you to recall, in just a few words, what happened on that evening. When Celia disappeared. Just as you remember it.’

  She sighed. ‘Well I’ve done it all before. Another time won’t matter. She was at the youth club playing table tennis with Bill…’

  ‘William?’

  ‘I call him Bill behind his back,’ she shrugged, ‘…and off she went home on her bike. It was about ten o’clock. Just getting dark. Nobody ever saw her again.’

  ‘Bill, William, stayed behind for a football meeting didn’t he?’

  Scorn quickly accumulated on her painted face. ‘Football! He didn’t play football or go to football meetings. Afraid of getting kicked. No; he stayed for something. Probably a netball meeting, that’s more like it. He liked to see the girls playing netball.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘Probably liked to see their drawers.’

  ‘Oh, I understand.’

  She glanced at him suspiciously. ‘Here, don’t think he did it. I’ve got no bloody time for him, but he wouldn’t do that. Not that sexual sort.’

  ‘The sexual sort?’

  ‘Well you don’t have to be a detective, to work out that she wasn’t done for her money, Celia. But not Bill Lind. He was there, in the club, for a good half hour afterwards. Anyway, not him.’ She turned to him determinedly. ‘You’re talking about a man who even now won’t have a bath unless he’s wearing his swimming trunks!’

  ‘Swimming trunks?’

  ‘His bloody swimming trunks. And I’ve told that to nobody else. Not even Clare, who’s my mate. I’d be too ashamed. He wanted to lock the door at first, but I wouldn’t have that. Not in my own home, with just the two of us here, so he put on his swimming trunks. Every time he has a bath he’s in there like bleeding Captain Webb.’

  Davies wanted to laugh but her face was crammed with unhappiness. ‘He comes from that sort of family,’ she sighed. ‘I’ve heard his mother talk about a chest of chicken.’ She rested her face in her hands and Davies sat embarrassed, wanting to touch her sympathetically.

  Instead he said, ‘What about this man Boot? Dave Boot?’

&
nbsp; Her head came up slowly as if it were on a lever. She was, about to answer when a melody played at the door. ‘Clare,’ she forecast. She stood up and composed her face into the smile it had carried when he had first walked in. ‘I’ll give you a call,’ she said. ‘At the police station?’

  ‘I’ll give you the number,’ he said, writing it out for her. ‘We’d better fix a time. I don’t like being in there longer than I can help. It’s miserable.’

  She smiled like some genteel hostess. ‘All right. Eight tonight. I’ll use the phone box on my way home.’

  ‘Eight?’ he said. ‘You won’t be home to get your husband’s dinner then?’

  ‘No I won’t,’ she said. She moved towards the door as the melody again warbled blandly. Davies thought how much the bell suited her.

  She paused inside the door before opening it. ‘I don’t do a lot for him,’ she said across her shoulder. ‘But then he doesn’t do much for me.’

  Because the call was promised for eight o’clock he had to miss dinner at Mrs Fulljames’s; he sat moodily in the CID room eating a hapless sandwich. He was wondering whether to eat the crust when the phone rang.

  Ena was mildly brazen in a giggling sort of way. He thought he could smell the ruby port and lemon drifting over the wires.

  ‘Listen,’ she said confidingly. ‘I reckoned it would be better on the telephone, but I’ve thought about it again. What the hell, I don’t care. I’ll tell you face to face. Can you meet me somewhere?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes, before I change my mind.’

  ‘All right. Where are you?’

  ‘I’m in a phone box at Willesden Green Station, Clare’s gone off home.’

  ‘I could be there in ten minutes,’ he said.

  ‘Come to the pub across the road from the station, The Lame Elephant. I don’t mind waiting in there. I’m not proud. I’ll be in the saloon bar but I won’t get a drink. I’ll wait for you, then you can buy it.’

  ‘Right. I’ll be right along.’