Dance Floor Drowning

by Brian Sellars

  *

  The school holiday was almost over. Billy was desperate to wrap the case up before he was sent back under the acid gaze of Sister Pauline and her gang of butterfly wimpled furies at St Joseph’s school. Most of his teachers were nuns; Sisters of Charity, mainly from Ireland. They were notoriously strict, and devout believers in corporal punishment. Headmistress, Sister Pauline, could pick off a giggler at fifty paces with a blackboard rubber, and had eyes in the back of her head, even despite her huge, starched wimple. Billy shuddered as he pedalled passed his empty school. Only a few more days and a thrashing with the slipper or cane would become a constant threat, and in his case, a frequent reality.

  He was heading for each of the three post offices in the area, Crookes, Rivelin, and Walkley. He needed to find out which one of them had a “fancy piece” with a grey car, so he could establish the make and model of the vehicle from which Sutcliffe had pinched the jacket. He eventually found it at Rivelin post office. The postmistress, a delightful young woman with long earrings that swung and twinkled, and wrists wrapped in jingling gold and silver, confirmed that her car was indeed the grey Morris Oxford, parked beside her shop.

  If Longden owned a similar car, it would go a long way towards proving that he had taken Professor Darnley to Man’s Head that fateful day. To be sure, Billy decided he would also check with the landlord at the Rivelin Hotel, where Ernest Tomlinson said he had seen the car parked. If everything checked out as he expected, he would then tell PC Needham and the case could be quickly wrapped up.

  He left the “fancy piece” at Rivelin post office. He could now confirm the make and model of the car. He had also learned what a delight a “fancy piece” could be. He cycled up to the football practice pitches on the Bole Hills. As expected Kick was there. Billy had to wait a few moments for him to complete a triumphal run, having just scored with an overhead bicycle-kick. It was an impressive feat, and would have been even more so, had there been any opposing players, in particular a goalkeeper. Kick ran around for a while, making hissing noises intended to sound like a crowd of forty thousand fans. It was some time before he stopped and recovered the ball from an imaginary net.

  ‘We’ve got to go to t’hospital where Longden works,’ Billy told him.

  Kick did not look keen. ‘Why?’

  ‘I want to find out what car he drives. If it’s a grey Morris Oxford, we’ve gorrim,’ Billy announced triumphantly.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It was that old misery Tomlinson, him who breeds budgies, who saw Sutcliffe pinching the professor’s jacket from a grey Morris Oxford. He said it was parked outside the pub at Man’s Head.’

  ‘Did he get the registration number?’

  Billy puffed out his cheeks in annoyance at his pal. It was certainly a flaw in the evidence, but not a serious one. ‘That dunt matter. I’ll show the pub landlord the photo from the newspaper. They must have gone in for a drink. They couldn’t just park their car there without going in. A sharp-eyed landlord would see who was parking in the pub’s spots, and if they weren’t paying customers they’d get a mouthful of aggro.’

  *

  In the greenhouse that afternoon, there was lots of rubbing out, editing and updating of the MOM board. Actual hard evidence was still a bit thin, but at least, they could now explain the missing jacket. Its theft from an unknown car at Rivelin, near the murder site, pointed to Darnley having been in the car at some time. Was he alone? Was he the driver? If so, where was the car now, and how had it vanished from the scene? It seemed more likely that he had been a passenger, so who was the driver?

  Billy chalked up an enigmatic note about chunter pipes. Yvonne gazed at it flat eyed and resisted the urge to seek clarification.

  ‘Kick and me are gonna eyeball that car,’ Billy said, acquiring an American accent. He adjusted an imaginary upturned raincoat coat collar and expelled imaginary smoke from an imaginary cigarette. ‘Did “the prof” get a lift to Man’s Head? Who took him? Why did they go?’ He turned to Yvonne, ‘And remember, Toots, whoever took him was probably the goon that snuffed him.’

  ‘Stop being daft; I know what to do.’ She turned the MOM board around, grabbed the chalk and started writing. ‘Kick can find out about the car,’ she said, writing Kick car. ‘You need to see Mary Scott’s friend that Mister Mebbey told you about.’ She wrote, Billy Mary Scott friend.

  ‘Oh I wanna do that,’ Kick said in a whining voice. ‘Tha orlas giz me rubbish jobs.’

  Billy took over. ‘I don’t care who does what,’ he said crossly. ‘We’ll all be back to school next week and if we’ve not done it by then we waint have time. Chuffin murderer will gerraway wi’ it! We have to get this all wrapped up and we’ve only gorra few days left.’

  ‘OK, I’ll do the car,’ said Kick sulkily.

  Billy underlined it and turned to Yvonne. ‘Your job is to find out what Longden found at Manor Lodge that gorrim all excited and …’

  ‘His Eureka,’ said Yvonne.

  Billy and Kick gaped at her for a second, stunned into silence.

  She shrugged, grabbed the chalk from Billy and started to write Eureka on the MOM board, but abandoned the attempt, defeated by a swelling combination of disapprobation and spelling uncertainty.

  Kick turned his surly frown to Billy. ‘What tha going to do?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m going to find constable Needham,’ Billy told him.

  *

  When Billy found him, an hour later, a harassed PC John Needham was booking the driver of a bread van for causing a traffic obstruction on South Road. The vehicle had two wheels on the pavement and two on the tram track. A delayed tram driver was stamping on his foot bell and yelling, unheard, through the tram’s bowed glass windscreen. Irate pedestrians were squeezing passed the van, and complaining to John as though it was his fault. Several wanted to lynch the van driver from a gas lamp, like Mussolini.

  Finally, the van pulled away and the red-faced tram driver drove after it, glaring at the constable and mouthing something unflattering. PC Needham blew a sigh and turned to face Billy with obvious relief. ‘The daft bugger,’ he growled. ‘I’d have helped him carry the bread in and lerrim off if he hadn’t started mouthing off at me.’ He shook his head and glared after the departing bread van. ‘He called me a “pointy head”.’

  Billy laughed explosively, struggling with his handkerchief to avoid splattering the affronted constable. He quickly controlled himself, on seeing that John was not amused.

  ‘Whaddaya want, Billy?’

  ‘Any news on the paint stain?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s just like you said. Forensics even matched it to the actual trestle. They won't confirm that the wearer of the jacket was probably hiding in the storage area, but they tipped me the wink. That's as good as a blind horse for me.’

  Billy bit his cheek. Blind horse; what did that mean? He dismissed it. The paint stain was evidence of a sort, but it still left much unanswered. ‘Is there any more? What about that – er – Detective Constable Wooffit? You said you’d talk to him. Has he come up with owt?’

  ‘Look Billy, everybody’s busy. There’s a whole bunch of new collars every day. We can’t all drop everything and do errands for you.’

  ‘But you said you’d ask him about the Turkish baths.’ Billy gave him a hard look.

  ‘I did ask him, he didn’t have anything,’ John said dropping his gaze guiltily. He thought for a moment and dredged up memories of his meeting with his friend D.C. Wooffit. ‘All he said was some old boy had complained to Longden about him and Darnley making a noise – arguing or something. He said they went off into another room when he'd complained, so as not to disturb the others. It was nothing. Now scram. I’ve got to get on.’

  Billy watched him walk away under the disapproving eyes of the shop owner. ‘They should be out catching burglars, not harassing bread vans,’ a woman passer-by said, to no-one in particular.

  *

  The following morning Billy followed the p
aperboy and the milkman into the simmering courts of Daniel Hill Street’s back-to-back houses. Nineteenth century builders had crammed them into every available space with such ingenious frugality as to impress even honeybees. Though he found all doors tightly shut against the day, he felt drawn in to every household by an encompassing undertow of lives thrust unwillingly into interdependence.

  Sally Snape lived with her bricklayer husband and their five children in three rooms beneath a similar family, with yet others adjoining at the back and at both sides. Being at ground level meant that her husband Tommy, could grow potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes and strawberries in old buckets, paint pots, biscuit tins, leaky saucepans and a couple of chimney pots. Rampant greenery thrived around their door and window and climbed to the bedroom where a window box trailed nasturtiums, marigolds and runner beans.

  After a short delay and some twitching of the curtains, Sally Snape answered Billy’s knock on the door. A thin, sallow skinned woman in her forties, she looked worn out. Her grey streaked brown hair was pinned under a hair net. Bare legged and wearing a faded floral apron over a mauve dress with baby milk stains on the shoulder, Sally was riding the tide of her life, weighed down by defeat and weary acceptance. She greeted Billy with hardly a glance, admitting him in as if she had no power to stop him.

  ‘It looks nice outside,’ said Billy discreetly acclimatizing to the foul smell of bed bugs, soiled children, one on a pot, and a pan of porridge simmering on the fire bars.

  ‘Tommy does that. He can grow owt in a bit of horse muck from the street. You wouldn’t believe what comes out of them old buckets.’

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you when you’re getting your breakfast, but it’s just a quick question. I was wondering if you could tell me anything about Mary Scott.’

  ‘She’s dead, God rest her soul.’ Sally crossed herself and kissed her thumbnail. ‘She was killed in that terrible bombing on the Marples.’

  ‘Yes I know,’ said Billy. ‘I was wondering about before that. She worked at the museum, didn’t she?’ He knew that she did, but wanted to get Sally talking.

  Sally raised a teacup in front of Billy and tilted her head inviting him to have a cup of tea. Billy shook his head. ‘She loved that job,’ Sally said smiling dreamily. ‘It took her out of this dump. She used to live round the corner in the top house. Her husband was down the pit. Then she started at the museum.’ Sally clenched her hands beneath her chin in delight. ‘Gerrin that job was a Godsend. And after a while she started getting on really well. She’d tell me all about it – right proud. They paid her more money and soon she even stopped the cleaning. She was setting things out - like displays and things. She moved house - up near Lydgate Lane in one of them nice bay windowed semis. They’re lovely they are. They’ve got bathrooms and gardens.’ She lifted the toddler off the pot, held its bottom under the cold tap and cleaned it with her fingers. The child howled deafeningly, without making the slightest impression on her. She served it up a dollop of porridge in a saucer, and sat it on the floor. It stopped screaming immediately and happily stuck its fingers into its breakfast and began feeding.

  Sally lit a cigarette and rinsed her older children’s porridge bowls under the tap, her eyes blinking rapidly in the tobacco smoke. ‘Some of ‘em round here sneered at her, but they always do if you get owt nice or show a bit of ambition.’

  Billy wondered what Sally’s ambitions might have been before her life was ground out. What spark had she possessed?

  ‘They said it was that posh friend of hers, the professor, who moved her up the ladder and did her favours, just as long as he – you know?’ She looked sideways at Billy and reasoned that he probably did not know, and was too young to warrant an explanation. ‘Anyway it wasn’t that. I knew her better than anybody did. We’d been best friends for years. She was older than me, of course, but we were real friends – like sisters.

  ‘Had she gone to the Marples with the professor?’ Billy asked, edging carefully towards the topic he really wanted to explore.

  ‘No, not with him, not really. He was there of course, but it was a sort of a works outing before Christmas. A lot of ‘em went from the museum and the university. She even said I could go with her, but I don’t go in for that sort of thing.’

  Billy supposed that Sally was lying. He thought she would probably have loved to have gone, but didn’t have the clothes for such a do, or would have felt awkward and out of place amongst such people.

  ‘He never took her out in public, the professor. She wouldn’t have stood for it, not Mary Daniels, as was. She was rather straight laced. She hated anything rude, or dishonest, or even just a bit cheeky. She would never have had an affair with a married man. I’ve seen her get all stiff and starchy over a seaside postcard. Chapel girl you see. She never missed a Sunday.’ The porridge-eating infant was suddenly on the move. It crawled to Billy with alarming speed, tottered to its feet and smeared porridge on Billy’s knees and socks.

  It was time to leave.

  *

  Billy’s mam had left him threppenz for a bag of chips for his lunch. It was a treat for being “a lovely helper”. He had whitewashed inside the chicken shed and an alcove in the cellar, which had a stone table built into it. The family jokingly called it the fridge. It was used to keep butter, cheese and milk cool. Whitewashing was work he always enjoyed, for some perverse reason. He never flinched from tackling the cellar steps, the outside toilet or the washhouse, and particularly enjoyed doing the chicken shed.

  He found Kick in the chip shop queue. ‘I’ve saved thee pog,’ he announced avoiding the petrifying glares of two queue jumped gorgons bristling in the wake of his generosity. ‘Thaz got cobwebs all o’re thee sen and white paint.’

  ‘I’ve just done us chickens and t’cellar fridge.’

  ‘I found Longden’s car in the hospital car park. Grey Morris Oxford. I was just going to ask ‘em at reception if it were his, but I saw him come out. He gorrin it and drove off.’ Billy ordered his chips and put down his money, all in haypniz, on the counter. ‘He’s gorra big scratch on it same as old tweedy knickers.’

  ‘She’s on the sauce,’ whispered Billy, still unsure of any significance for that.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sauce. She’s on the sauce.’

  ‘We don’t do sauce,’ snapped the fish fryer. ‘This’s a bloody chip shop not the Savoy. Tha gets salt and vinegar nor nowt else.’

  Billy winced and ordered his chips. ‘Can I have some scraps on ‘em an’ all, please.’ He loved scraps, those crozzled little crisps of batter that fizzled off the fish in the frying. Usually they were strained off the fat and thrown away, unless begged by passing children.

  ‘Threppenz. I ought to charge thee a penny extra for them scraps,’ said the man sourly.

  ‘Suit thee sen,’ said Billy. ‘I’ll gerram from Johnellis chip shop in future if tha does. My mam says his tail end is better than thine anyway.’

  The fish fryer shot Billy a killer look and moved quickly on to his next customer, one of the Gorgons. She was still trying to turn Kick into stone, but a few others in the queue smirked and winked at Billy as he left the shop.

  The lads ate their chips from the newspaper wrappings as they slowly walked up to the greenhouse. ‘So if that was his car it proves he went to Man’s Head rocks,’ Billy said. ‘But why did he have Darnley’s coat in his car? Was Darnley with him? Had they gone there together? Had Longden killed him and left him there?’

  ‘What I don’t understand is,’ said Kick, his exuberance almost expelling a half chewed chip, ‘what did Longden see on the Turret House roof that made him so excited that he and the professor went dashing off to Man’s Head rocks the first chance they got.’

  Billy nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yeah, we need to cop another look at that roof. Get thee bike. I’ll go and borrow my granny’s magnifying glass and we’ll ride over there this afts.’

  ‘What about t'warden though? She waint lerrus in if we’ve no grown up wi’ us.’


  Billy nodded. Kick was right. ‘We’ll need to create a diversion. Like they do in films.’ He looked around frowning. ‘I’ll think of sommat on t'way there.’

  *

  A chattering gaggle of middle-aged ladies milled around the beaming custodian as they exited the Turret House door. She was smiling, nodding and tilting her head obsequiously as the women shook her hand and patted her shoulders. Billy dismounted and wheeled his bike in through the pedestrian gate. Kick followed and parked his bike next to Billy’s. The party of well to do ladies had evidently enjoyed their guided tour, and were taking a long time about leaving. At last, amid much laughter and gentile squealing, they turned and started towards the gate. The custodian waved and almost curtsied before slipping back inside and closing the door.

  The lads waited for the women to leave and then approached the door. Kick tentatively rattled its great iron knocker. The custodian appeared almost immediately, beaming expectantly. Her face fell when she saw the two boys. She had probably expected to see one of the ladies returning for a misplaced glove or umbrella. ‘Oh, it’s you two again.’ She looked out and cast around, her disappointment growing by the second. ‘Where’s the doctor?’

  ‘He’s not here this time, but we’ll only be a minute.’ Billy hoped this would satisfy her.

  ‘You won’t because you’re not coming in.’ She started to close the door in their faces.

  Billy launched into the diversionary tactic, he and Kick had worked out on the journey over. ‘That bloke over there with the sheep dog said you’d lerrus in.’ Billy nodded in the direction of the Manor Lodge’s ghostly ruins.

  ‘Dog! What dog?’ The woman gaped in horror. ‘Where is he?’