Last Detective

by Thomas, Leslie

  ‘Mr Tilth is not being arrested for anything,’ Davies called up to her. ‘He has some valuable information for the police, that’s all. We won’t be long.’

  As they went out into the street she creaked open an upstairs window and leaned out. ‘It’s a bleeding trick, mate,’ she called to her husband. ‘Don’t you admit nothing.’

  ‘Go to bed, for Christ’s sake,’ ordered the gardener.

  ‘All right,’ she returned angrily. ‘But don’t expect me to wait for you to come out of prison this time. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  ‘Silly mare,’ commented Mr Tilth. They said nothing more.

  It was about ten minutes’ walk and they went silently through the hollow streets. Davies was conscious of a shiver in his stomach. He increased their pace. They crossed the main road and then went down along the bank of the canal. It was a dark night and they could not see the water, only sense it and hear its fidgeting. The lamp at the bridge stood in the distance like a mariners’ lighthouse; under it there was a reflected yellow sheen on the dull water and its illumination touched the boundary hedge of the allotments.

  ‘I’m glad I’m with you,’ said Mr Tilth. ‘The magistrate told me that the next time I came here I’d get three months minimum.’ He looked at Davies and even in the dark Davies could discern the question all over his face. ‘It is all right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Davies said ambiguously. ‘We won’t be here long.’

  ‘I wish I knew what we’re going to do.’

  ‘Well, we’ve not come after turnips or sprouts,’ said Davies. ‘Not this time.’

  The man obligingly showed him the easiest place to climb over the hedge and then followed him into the garden. It was an inhospitable patch, draped with cold darkness, damp rising to the knee. In a strange manner the crammed town seemed to have vanished. They might have been standing in a bog. Davies’s attention went straight to the end of the plot.

  ‘He’s got his greenhouse on it,’ sniffed Mr Tilth. ‘Rickety old thing.’

  Davies walked slowly along the garden path. The greenhouse stood like a beached ship, a faint light coming through its ribs. The ground around was muddy, but Mr Tilth scratched the surface expertly with his shoe and Davies touched the concrete underneath.

  ‘Where was the entrance, the trap-door?’ he whispered.

  ‘About here,’ said Mr Tilth. ‘He’s got the greenhouse over the top of it.’ He took a pace forward and opened the wheezy door of the wooden-framed building. Davies saw the whole structure wobble at the touch.

  ‘Bloody awful old thing, this,’ the other man complained. ‘Rotten. The wooden ones always fall to bits in the end.’

  ‘Is it inside, the trap-door?’ asked Davies anxiously. He shone the torch to get his answer. It illuminated a small glade of pots and plants.

  ‘A mess, just like I thought,’ grumbled Mr Tilth. ‘Look at that Fatsia, Mr Davies. Ever seen such a disgrace?’ He pulled at a large leaf like a hand and it obediently came adrift from its stalk. He looked to the floor. ‘It’s all wooden boards,’ he said. ‘I thought he might have concreted it over again, but he wouldn’t bother. Not him.’

  ‘Good for him,’ remarked Davies. ‘Where’s the trapdoor then? Where is it?’

  ‘Let’s see. It would just about be at the far end, as I remember.’ He bent with the torch. ‘He’s got a whole lot of Pelegorams overwintering just there.’ He sniffed. ‘This lot won’t see the spring, anyway.’ He began to shift the pots without care, tossing them to both sides. There followed some seed boxes and then a brief struggle with some rotten planks which formed the floor. The debris began to pile up on the side. Eventually Mr Tilth straightened up. ‘There it is,’ he said simply.

  Davies almost fell forward, stumbling in his bulky coat over the short planks, seed boxes and plastic flower plots. Mr Tilth was shining the torch downward. It illuminated a rusty metal cover, a yard square, fitted deep into the ground. Davies felt a frightening expectation. ‘We’ll need a shovel and a pick,’ he whispered. ‘Can you find them?’

  ‘I might have to break the toolshed lock,’ said Mr Tilth with patent hope.

  ‘Do it, then.’

  ‘Right. Won’t be a minute. The shed’s rotten as well. This bloke’s got no idea. No idea at all.’

  He went out leaving Davies crouched in almost a prayer like attitude in front of the rusty metal square. He leaned forward, tapped it with his fist and backed minutely away as though expecting an answer.

  A busy splintering of wood came from the darkness outside and then a grunt of accomplishment. Mr Tilth loomed behind him with a spade and a pick-axe. ‘You’d better let me do it,’ the gardener suggested. ‘I know the best way. And with your face all like that…’

  Davies did not ponder the logic of the statement. He stood back and let the man go to work with a nocturnal professionalism. In that confined place it was like digging in a coal mine. Small cargoes of stony earth came back as Mr Tilth cleaned the fringe of the metal plate. Eventually he stopped and remarked quietly over his shoulder, ‘There’s a sort of metal ring at one end. If we can hook the toe of the pick-axe into it we might be able to see if it’s going to shift.’

  Eagerly Davies passed the pick-axe to him. He was feeling sweaty now, with the inherent warmth of the greenhouse, his heavy clothes, his bandages and his mounting excitement. Mr Tilth took the tool and manoeuvred while Davies shone the torch between his legs, the only convenient aperture. The point of the implement eventually engaged the ring and Davies heard it creak as the ring moved on its hinge. ‘Right, let’s give it a try,’ suggested Mr Tilth. ‘Let me have a go first.’ His small muscular body bent in the dimness but there was no answering scrape from the horizontal trap. He tried again, fiercely, but then gave it up. ‘Good and fixed,’ he panted. ‘Been fixed for too long.’

  ‘Let’s both have a go,’ suggested Davies. With difficulty he found space beside Mr Tilth, pushing plants and pots roughly aside to make room. There were two benches now confining them, one on each side. Mr Tilth straightened up and with dark enjoyment tipped one of them on its side sending a further avalanche of nurtured greenery to the floor. Davies took the cue and capsized the other. ‘Serve the bugger right,’ muttered the deposed gardener happily.

  They now had room to both hold the pick. The area of the trap had been cleared but it seemed to have rusted into the very earth. The point of the pick was still engaged in the corroded ring. ‘Right,’ said Davies. ‘Let’s try it.’

  They both bore down on the handle, seeking to lever the plate from its setting. Nothing happened. They eased off and rested, panting, then tried again. This time they felt it move. ‘Steady a minute,’ said Davies. They relaxed. ‘Next time it’ll come.’

  It did. They felt it shudder and then begin to move upwards towards them. Davies knew he was shaking with anticipation. ‘Keep it up,’ he snorted. ‘Another good one.’

  Then the handle came out of the pick-axe. They were heaving at their utmost when it happened and the release sent them violently staggering back. The considerable weight of Davies, followed by Mr Tilth, collided with the flimsy end wall of the greenhouse behind them. The rotting wood bulged, buckled and collapsed, splintered and split all about them, the panes of glass sliding like a glacier over a precipice. With a sigh the rest of the aged greenhouse followed the collapse, sagging forward and easing itself gratefully to the ground. It fell with no great sound as though it had been awaiting the moment for years. It stretched itself out, some of the glass breaking, but most of the panes simply slithering away. Davies and Mr Tilth found themselves lying under a blanket of wreckage.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Mr Tilth inadequately. ‘That’s fucking done it.’

  Davies dragged himself clear and he and the gardener got to their feet beside what now appeared to be the debris of some disastrous Zeppelin.

  ‘Come on,’ said Davies limping around to the rear of the wreckage. Mr Tilth, who was patiently enjoying himself on wha
t he saw as some sort of licensed destruction, wiped the wood-dust from his eyes and followed. ‘Ah, that’s good,’ said Davies. Mr Tilth followed his downward look. The wall’s falling the opposite way had almost cleared the metal plate. It required only a few random pushes with their shoes to clear away some stray wood and glass and there it was as exposed as before. ‘Can you get the pick,’ said Davies almost absently.

  ‘The pick’s no bloody good,’ answered Mr Tilth. ‘The man can’t even look after his tools. Anyway we’ve loosened it up, what we want now is some wire. There’s some hanging outside his shed. Hang on, Mr Davies. Just hang on.’

  He returned quickly with the wire, it was stout and tough. They hooked and bent it around the upturned ring and then moving to the side, clear of the debris, they heaved on it like a tug-of-war team. They felt the metal shift, scrape, then shift again. Another effort, another taking of the strain, and they heard the whole plate come away. Just ahead of them, in the dark, was a hole.

  ‘Now what?’ asked Mr Tilth.

  He looked through the night in surprise. Davies was merely standing there, stiff, as though unable to make the final move. ‘Now what, indeed,’ he said and his voice trembled over the few words. They had put the torch on the ground and now he reached for it and went deliberately towards the square aperture they had opened in the earth. Mr Tilth stood back, wondering, in the manner of someone watching a secret ritual he does not comprehend. Davies reached the hole and stood looking down, still not shining the torch into the opening. Then he did.

  It shone immediately on the bones. A pathetic, lonely pile of cold, damp bones. Davies kneeled and looked closer. The torch wavered in his hands. He felt a huge engulfing sadness rising in his throat. Tears flooded his eyes. ‘Oh, Celia,’ he muttered. ‘What a rotten trick.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  In the morning the ward sister stopped by his bed and said: ‘Ah, there, now you look a whole lot better for a good night’s sleep.’

  Since he had not returned to his bed before three o’clock he raised his eyebrows as far as he was able. She could only see the triangle of his face between eyes and point of chin, a small area from which to judge that someone was looking better, so he concluded that it was just hospital small talk. Nevertheless after two hours a doctor examined him and said he could go home but had to return every day to the out patients’ department. He went gladly.

  Mod was at his desk in the library, like an archbishop wallowing in his books. As Davies walked into the foyer, and paused to smile gratefully at the Home Guard photograph on the wall, he could see a girl from the staff taking Mod a cup of coffee at the distant end of the reference room.

  He walked in, evoking disapproving looks from staff and customers, people in bandages apparently being unwelcome. Mod saw him coming and smiled felicitations.

  ‘All better, then, son?’ he whispered drinking the coffee above the pages of the open volume before him. ‘Glad to see you out.’

  Davies sat down and stared from the aperture in his bandages. ‘I’ve found her,’ he said simply. ‘I’ve found the body.’

  Mod jerked a wave of coffee over the side of the cup and on to the printed page. His sharp and guilty look was followed by a swift sweep of his sleeve to wipe it away. ‘Where?’ he asked.

  Davies told him where and how it had taken place. ‘I remembered that Home Guard photo out in the lobby there,’ he said. ‘It’s got a picture of the blockhouse that used to be along by the canal. It’s been knocked down, but it had a basement room, a kind of concrete operations room. That’s where he put her. Down there.’

  Mod’s library whisper whistled across the table. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I left her there,’ Davies said simply. ‘I pulled the cover back and left her there. I’ve told the gardening bloke, Mr Tilth, that if he says a word to anyone I’ll investigate the theft of a palm tree, which he’s got standing in his living room at the moment. That scared him. He won’t tell.’

  ‘You won’t do anything? Not report it?’

  Davies shook his head, still a painful achievement. ‘I’m going to risk it, Mod,’ he said. ‘I’ve got her but I haven’t got him yet.’

  ‘It looks more and more like our policeman friend,’ muttered Mod. ‘Police Constable Dudley. And he’s dead. So you’ll never get him.’ He touched the coffee-damp pages of his book then closed it. ‘Nobody will open that again for a few years anyway,’ he shrugged. ‘By that time it won’t matter, will it.’

  ‘Sounds like a summing up of our case,’ said Davies. ‘I don’t know what to do next, Mod.’

  ‘You would have thought that places like that underground room would have been searched when they were looking for the girl,’ said Mod thoughtfully. ‘You know, police with tracker dogs, like you see on the television.’

  Davies said: ‘Well, to start with nobody took her disappearance all that seriously for about a month. I mean she was seventeen, it wasn’t a little kid vanishing, and she’d gone off before, remember. There was a search but we’ll never know how thorough it was. Perhaps PC Dudley got that area allocated to himself during the search. That wouldn’t be all that difficult. Remember a policeman actually went to see Mr Whethers, but nothing was ever done, as far as we know, about that statement, or about following up whatever the other old chap, Mr Harkness saw, or thought he saw. Was that policeman PC Dudley as well? Remember Mr Whethers never actually reported what he saw. The policeman came of his own accord after hearing the stories going around the district.’

  ‘Perhaps nobody at the police station wanted that evidence to come out,’ sniffed Mod.

  Davies looked at him steadily. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose that’s possible.’

  ‘On the evidence,’ added Mod. ‘Half the force were pissed out of their minds that night. One, who should have been on duty, was screwing a fortune teller, and another, who was also on duty, was committing rape and murder. Join London’s police for a worthwhile career.’

  Davies scowled at him. ‘All right, all right. It’s all “mights and maybes” though, isn’t it.’ He paused, then inquired, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got your dole money yet, have you?’

  ‘Social Security,’ corrected Mod. ‘No. I get paid tomorrow.’

  ‘I thought so. I was toying with the idea of you buying me a drink.’

  ‘I’ll accompany you,’ said Mod closing the books with finality. ‘And, if you’ll honour me with a loan, I’ll buy the drinks, repaying the debt tomorrow.’ He looked doubtfully at Davies’s head. ‘I can’t see you getting a pint glass in that little window in the bandages,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll have to drink shorts,’ replied Davies. He waited while Mod replaced his books on the various shelves. ‘Amazing, you know,’ said Mod as they made for the door. ‘The period from 3000 BC to 500 BC, two thousand five hundred years, in Britain was a time of almost uninterrupted peace and progress.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ replied Davies soberly.

  ‘Due to the fact that nobody really wanted anything,’ said Mod. ‘There were only a few tribes, and lots of land for their needs and plenty of room for invaders. It has also been said that the people turned from worshipping the Gods of War, which had always attracted the menfolk, to worshipping the Gods of Fertility and the like, which were kind of Women’s Lib Gods.’

  ‘I bet the police force was crooked,’ suggested Davies. He tapped the Home Guard picture affectionately as they reached the foyer. Mod nodded at it sagely. ‘What are you going to do next?’

  ‘Well, one thing I want to do and that is tell Josie nearly everything.’

  ‘Nearly? You won’t tell her you’ve found the body?’

  ‘No. I won’t tell her that.’

  They walked along the shut and shadowed street. It was eleven-thirty and urban cats were beginning to sound and wander. Once more everybody for miles about seemed to have gone home and locked their doors against the night. The crowds were in their beds. They ha
d abandoned the town to the dark.

  Josie’s footfalls progressed deftly along the pavements while Davies’s large feet made only a muffled scraping in the gutter. He chose to walk there so as to bring their heights somewhere into proximity although even with the adjustment he still looked down at her.

  His overcoat hung largely about him while she was small and neatly wrapped as a package. They walked without touching or speaking. He had not told her that he had found her sister’s body.

  Close to her house was one of the district’s innumerable alleys, afterthoughts, shortcuts, planning compromises, sprouting through the lines of streets. As they went past she caught his large hand and encouraged him into its darkness. He stood there, awkward as ever, she with her back to somebody’s fence, he facing her but only touching her by placing his hands lightly about her waist. She regarded him morosely in the gloom.

  ‘Oh, Dangerous,’ she said. ‘You’ll never make a teenager.’

  ‘I can’t remember being much of a teenager even when I was one,’ he confessed wryly. ‘And now I’m a bit far gone for necking against fences.’

  ‘God,’ she sighed. ‘You stand there like a dummy from Burton’s window. Have a go at kissing me. Go on.’

  He eased forward from the waist and her face rose to kiss him. They had taken some more of his bandages off that day so that his face was now exposed although he still looked oddly like a man peering through a window. With the kiss she pushed her slight body closer to him, unbuttoning the overcoat briskly as she did so. He folded it protectively about her. They had spent half an hour that evening going over his notes written on the paper appropriated from Minnie Banks, the school teacher.

  ‘I’m glad you’ve told me everything,’ she said. ‘About Celia.’ Then she repeated: ‘That’s if it is everything.’

  ‘There are further inquiries,’ he said looking down at the crown of her dark hair.