England. Davies perceived, had been playing, not very competently, at Wembley Stadium. ‘I reckon that referee’s a wanker,’ said the fan closest to Davies’s left ear. ‘And the linesmen. Both wankers.’
‘’S’no use calling them wankers, mate,’ replied the man next to his right ear, having overheard the confidence. ‘Not when all the bloody forwards are wankers. And the fucking defence.’
The first man told him to shut his face and there came a verbal altercation followed swiftly by a fist fight, with Davies jammed between the two antagonists. One had, with swift initiative, grabbed the other’s England rosette and was trying to ram it into his mouth. A kick landed on Davies’s ankle and another apparently found a target somewhere else because cries were followed by a renewed outbreak of fighting. All at once Davies felt like an elephant trapped in a river by crocodiles. He lumbered about trying to keep out of the way while the tight battle jabbed and butted all around him. A scarf was being tightened around a reddening neck. He was trying to avoid revealing he was a policeman but when he was forced to shout this revelation the only reaction was that somebody kneed him in the valley. The entire jammed carriage seemed to be swaying with the battle; arms and fists, heads and oaths, flew about the tubular space. Davies tried to reach for his warrant card but he could not free his hand, trapped beneath an anonymous but hard armpit.
The mêlée was resolved abruptly and simply by the train’s arrival at the next station, the doors opening and the bursting battle, or a fair proportion of it, being spilled on to the platform, where it roiled about with increased gusto. When the doors slid to a close again one-third of the original passengers were gone. Such fighting as was left in the train reduced itself to incomplete skirmishes and bitter looks.
A morsel-sized man, almost smothered by his England muffler and rosette, had been pummelled into one corner by the fierceness of the engagement, and now squatted on the floor trying to reassemble his spectacles. ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ he complained. ‘But they’re all supposed to be supporting bleeding England.’ Standing immediately behind him, watching Davies, was Dave Boot.
Davies moved close to him. Even the mutterings all around had now descended to sullenness or attempts at a sane analysis of the game. Davies said to Boot: ‘Do you come here often?’
‘Only when there’s a football match at Wembley,’ replied Boot. ‘Then the roads get jammed. Now where would you be going?’
‘With you,’ said Davies simply.
‘Listen, you’re not following me to my place. I live with my mum,’ said Boot unexpectedly. ‘And I don’t want my old lady upset by the police.’
‘Where do you live?’ asked Davies.
‘You’ll have to wait and see where I get off.’
The train arrived at another stop and more men disembarked. Some waved their rattles in melancholy defiance in the damp lamplit air.
‘I don’t mind asking you a few questions here,’ said Davies, who did mind. Boot knew it was a bluff. A sharp expression seeped into his eyes. Both were aware that the men around them had all produced newspapers from behind the creases of which they were listening avidly. ‘Go on then,’ challenged Boot. ‘Ask.’
Indecision swamped Davies. He looked around at the ears projecting from the papers. ‘I can wait,’ he said. ‘I can wait until we get off.’
‘How’s your murder?’ asked Boot loudly. The eyes joined the ears ascending from the edges of the pages. ‘Fancy you being involved in a nasty business like that.’
Davies glared at him. ‘Shut up,’ he demanded throatily. ‘You’re showing us up.’
‘Grisly thing, murder,’ continued Boot unconcerned. ‘Especially being involved so deep, like you are.’
‘I’ll arrest you and drag you out at the next station,’ whispered Davies. ‘I’m not kidding.’
‘What for?’ asked Boot more quietly. ‘You’ve got nothing to arrest me for. What’s the charge—being cheeky to a copper on the London Underground?’
They were interrupted by the formidable entry of a ticket inspector at the next station. As though he had been purposely briefed he homed straight on Davies. ‘Ticket please,’ he boomed. Others around began fumbling.
‘I haven’t got one,’ muttered Davies. ‘I was…I would have paid.’
‘They all say that. They all want to pay once they’re nabbed,’ boomed the Inspector. ‘That’s why London Transport is losing money. People like you.’
‘I didn’t know how far I was going,’ explained Davies hurriedly. He put his head close, almost affectionately next to the inspector’s bristly neck. ‘I’m a police officer,’ he whispered.
‘Oh, are you now? I’ve heard that one as well,’ claimed the inspector with a booming grin. ‘Well, sir, can I see your warrant card?’
The entire compartment now stood expectantly grouped to watch Davies produce his warrant card. Those without a good vantage stood on the seats or levered themselves up on the hangers. Boot stood watching Davies and his discomfiture with an adjacent smile.
‘Warrant card?’ said Davies. ‘Oh, all right. This is very inconvenient I can tell you.’ Even as his hand went to his pocket he knew it would not be there. He remembered last seeing it on his bedside table back at Mrs Fulljames’s. The hand returned empty-handed. The other hand went into the other inside pocket and then to the outside enclosures of his coat. ‘I had it,’ he protested desperately. ‘Somebody must have picked my pocket.’
The inspector laughed knowingly. ‘You haven’t got a warrant card, you haven’t got a ticket, and you don’t know where you’re going until you get there. Does that sum it up, sir?’
Davies nodded miserably. ‘I’m afraid it does. But I am a policeman, honest.’
‘He’s a friend of mine,’ nodded Boot. ‘I can vouch for him. And I’ve got a ticket.’
‘Are you a policeman, sir?’ inquired the inspector looking at Boot with a respect that he had not wasted on Davies.
‘No. But I can identify myself.’ He went quickly to his pocket. ‘These are my business cards. And here’s a letter from the Mayor of Neasden in connection with some charity work I am performing. It has my address on it.’
Davies, on instinct, tried to get a sight of the address but the inspector, giving him a quick, foul look, took it out of his view. ‘Mr. Boot!’ said the inspector. ‘Ah yes, I know you! From my boxing days in Willesden. Remember you well, Mr Boot.’ He glanced, still disparagingly at Davies. ‘Well, if you can vouch for him, that’s good enough for me. He’ll have to pay his fare though. He won’t get away with that.’
‘I’ll see he pays it to the ticket collector when we get out. We don’t know how far we’re going yet.’
‘Oh, all right. I’ll trust him then,’ said the inspector. He turned to the white-faced Davies. ‘Now I’m putting you in Mr Boot’s charge,’ he said. He wagged a big, red finger. ‘And just remember—you’re on your honour.’
Passengers left the train at every station and few boarded to take their places. When the adjoining seats became vacant Boot, enjoying himself, rolled his eyes suggestively and Davies grumpily followed him to them. Eventually there remained only a mothy-looking woman near them and two men, both wearing England rosettes as big as their faces, who sat at the extreme end of the carriage, on opposite seats, contemplating each other in antagonistic silence.
Davies frowned at the passing stations and then at the map. The train was under the Thames and heading for home at the Elephant and Castle. Boot was clamped in silence, taking a newspaper out of his pocket and reading it minutely. Davies sat uncomfortably. The mothy woman stood up and gathered her spreadeagled belongings to her, eventually, and got from the train. Now there only remained the two men and they were at the far end. ‘All right,’ sighed Boot, folding away his paper. ‘What’s it all about?’
‘I hope you enjoyed your fun,’ replied Davies sourly.
‘I saved you from being thrown off the train for not paying your fare. You might have even been arrested,’
Boot pointed out.
‘Yes, very good of you, mate. Now where exactly are we getting off?’
‘I’m not getting off,’ said Boot firmly. ‘You can if you like. But I told you, I don’t want any copper following me home and upsetting my mum. It’s not as if you’ve got a warrant or anything. Like I told you before, my solicitor ought to be present.’
‘She means a lot to you, your mum,’ commented Davies.
‘Funnily enough she does,’ replied Boot sharply.
‘Did you used to go home, to your mum in the old days—in the good old days, remember? Did you go home to her after screwing Roxanne Potts on the vaulting horse?’
‘Who the hell…!’
‘Roxanne Potts, now there’s a name to conjure with.’
Boot looked miserably thoughtful. ‘Jesus, you’ve been busy digging them up, haven’t you. Roxanne Potts. She must be forty-odd now.’
‘She was fifteen then,’ said Davies quietly. ‘So was Ena and so was poor dead Celia Norris. Remember the trampoline? Nobody could accuse you of not using the equipment.’ He made a bouncing movement with his hands. ‘Davy go up, Davy go down. Davy go up…’
‘Pack it in, will you, you bastard,’ snorted Boot. He looked along to see if the men at the far end of the carriage were listening. They had stood up to get out. The train was at the end of the line. They looked around curiously at Davies and Boot, then stepped down and hurried away with collars pulled around their ears. As each of them walked past the window their eyes came around the sharp end of their collars to look at the two who remained in the train.
‘Elephant and Castle,’ said Boot, half getting too his feet. ‘It stops here.’
Davies eased him back into the seat. ‘But I don’t,’ he said. ‘Now we’ve travelled so far together I want you to listen for a while and then I want to hear your story too. I suggest you do it now, Booty, because later it could make things much nastier for you.’
Boot sat down. ‘We can’t sit here,’ he argued lamely. ‘The train’s finished for the night.’
‘We’ll wait until they throw us off,’ said Davies cheerfully. ‘It’s warm and comfortable and it’s quiet. We can talk.’
‘Who’s been talking to you?’ asked Boot. ‘Roxanne Potts?’
‘No. I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Roxanne. Try again.’
‘That Ena.’
‘That Ena it was,’ approved Davies. ‘Ena Brown that was. Ena Lind that is. She married dashing Bill Lind, you know, and now lives in a council penthouse overlooking the entire world. You know she’s even got a green cat.’
‘Sometimes,’ observed Boot, ‘you sound like you’re drunk when you’re not.’
‘You don’t believe she’s got a green cat? I’ll take you along to see it if you like. It’s really something to see.’
‘No. No thanks. I’ll pass on that one.’
‘Ena would love to see big muscled Dave again. You could wear a singlet and a jock strap. She’d know you meant business then. Take a trampoline along and—provided you could take it up in the lift—you could have a rare old time together. Just like the old days.’
‘You can’t touch me for that, Davies. It was years ago.’
‘So was the murder. I could touch you for that.’
Boot’s face stiffened as though he had suddenly realized the magnitude of the business. ‘And murder is a wound that time won’t heal,’ encouraged Davies close to his ear. ‘You’d better tell me all you know, Booty.’
‘I told you, I didn’t have anything to do with it. Not killing her,’ said Boot dragging the words out. ‘Straight.’
‘All the more important that you should tell me what you did have to do with then,’ urged Davies quietly. ‘Otherwise I might think you did do that bad thing.’
A London Underground man strolled along the platform, a languid West Indian, buried by life below a cold city. He was supposed to check the train but as he passed the carriage where they sat his attention was caught by a new cinema poster. He examined it casually, quietly embroidered the heroine with a curly moustache, and continued his echoing patrol without seeing Boot or Davies. They did not see him either. Boot was whispering to Davies about teenage girls who had seduced him in the days that used to be. Davies was listening. He was waiting. The doors of the train slid together in a sleepy embrace and it moved. Boot looked up, but now he had begun he seemed reluctant to let anything get in the way. For his part Davies would have detained him on the train even if he had known it had just begun a journey to Addis Ababa.
Eventually Boot had told everything he knew or remembered or cared to relate. He had not been looking even occasionally at Davies’s face. Few people do when they are telling something difficult from their past. When he thought he had come to the conclusion of the story, he did glance up as if he thought Davies might have dropped off to sleep. But the big, scarred face was still watching him. The brown overcoat had settled around the policeman’s shoulders like a mound of damp earth.
‘We’re moving,’ Boot said nodding at the darkness that was stumbling by the window. ‘God knows where we’re going now.’
‘It’s no bother,’ yawned Davies. ‘These things find it difficult to get out of London. You hadn’t finished, had you?’
‘Yes,’ hesitated Boot. ‘I think I’ve told you everything, officer.’
Anger gathered in Davies’s face like an extra bruise. ‘Don’t you fucking “officer” me, Booty,’ he threatened. He stood up and grabbed the other man’s lapels, lifting him from the seat. ‘Tell us about your boxing days then,’ he said. Boot’s face stretched tight and he began to say something. Davies, however, picked him up and threw him the length of the carriage. He landed, half-sitting in the open area by the doors. ‘It’s all right, inspector, I can vouch for him. I’ll see he pays his fare,’ Davies called up after him. Boot, his features drained, looked along the seats from his place on the floor. ‘You’re out to get your own back for that,’ he whispered. ‘You’re like all of those police buggers. All for yourself in the end. You’re going to do me over because I made you look small.’
Davies at once beamed into a real smile. ‘No, I wouldn’t do that, Booty. Not to you. Not while we’re having such a useful talk.’ He walked over and hauled Boot up from the floor with excess gallantry, brushing him down and replacing him in his seat. ‘But,’ he said when they were seated again. ‘But, I want to tell you something. For your own comfort and convenience. If you don’t think of a bit more of that story, the bit you’ve left out, I’m going to chuck you down to that other gangway next time. That furthest one up there. And then I shall come and stamp on you for taking the piss out of me in front of all the football fans. All right. You’ve got that clear?’
Boot’s head went up and down as though it were on a hinge. ‘What else then?’ he asked.
‘The night, Booty,’ said Davies, his nose almost in the man’s ear. ‘The night of July 23rd, 1951.’ His face dissolved and he broke into a fragment of song. ‘That perfect night, the night you met, there was magic abroad in the air…’
‘Celia?’ said Boot.
‘Too bloody right, Celia,’ confirmed Davies quietly. A little smoke of excitement began to rise within his heart. Boot watched his fists close. ‘That night.’
‘We had it,’ said Boot. ‘Sexual intercourse, that is. She pestered me. They all did. Christ, I was on the point of exhaustion sometimes.’
‘Rotten lot,’ murmured Davies.
‘And she kept on at me. It was her turn, she said. So… so…that night I told her to come to the store after she had told everybody she was going home. And I saw her there.’
‘Why did you kill her, Booty?’
‘I DIDN’T KILL HER!’
His shout echoed strangely through the carriage. The train was clattering and curving on its nameless journey. Davies reached for the lapels again, picked up Boot and flung him the distance to the far doorway. He lay on the ribbed wooden floor looking around him, trying to f
ind his breath.
‘There, I told you I could do it,’ Davies remarked. He walked, swaying with the train towards Boot. Boot sat up and hid his head in his hands like a frightened boy in a school playground. Davies hung above him on the straps. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to throw you back again?’
Boot spoke from his sitting position, his face still enclosed in his hands. ‘I had her knickers,’ he said. ‘I got rid of them after. But I didn’t kill her, Davies. Straight I didn’t. She was all right when she went from me. She went off on her bike.’
‘Leaving you with the prize pants,’ said Davies. The smoke within him had become a small fire of triumph. He had solved something!
‘She ran off without them,’ muttered Boot. ‘We’d had a row, a dispute…’
‘About what, Booty?’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. It’s twenty-five years ago…’
‘What about?’
‘I wanted her to do something, you know what I mean, and she wouldn’t. She suddenly turned all Catholic and said it was a sin. And I started to kid her about it, just kidding, and she got wild as hell…and…’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Davies, ‘You said I’d know. But I can’t even guess. What did you have the fight about?’
‘You are a bastard,’ muttered Boot. ‘You just want to hear me say it, don’t you.’ He looked up as he felt the damp sole of Davies’s shoe pushing him in the shirtfront, an inch below his Adam’s apple.
‘That’s right, I want you to say it.’ said Davies. ‘My imagination is a bit limited about things like this.’
‘I wanted her to…give me a gobble,’ said Boot, his head going back to its hiding place between his hands. He looked up and his expression collided with Davies’s look of outraged disbelief. ‘You know…’ Boot mumbled. ‘A gobble. You know what a gobble is.’
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