The Flaxborough Crab f-6

by Colin Watson

  The Chief Constable pursed his lips. “Mind you, Mr Purbright, I should be inclined to treat that sort of tiling with great reserve. Newspapers, you know...” He shook his head sadly.

  Purbright was well aware of Mr Chubb’s distrust of the Press. Only two weeks previously, in its report of the annual Flaxborough Kennel Club Show, the Citizen had emasculated in print his prize-winning Yorkshire Terrier, ‘Six-shot Rufus of Swaledale’, by contriving to substitute its name for that of the Bitch with the Most Appealing Eyes.

  “It does seem rather a pity,” Mr Chubb said, “that we have to get this sort of information at second hand, so to speak. I should have thought that it fell into the category of gossip.”

  “We must not despise gossip if it proves useful, sir.”

  “No, but don’t you think that this fellow might get tired of roaming around and making a nuisance of himself if he isn’t encouraged by a lot of fuss? I’ll have a word with Lintz, if you like. He owes me a favour.”

  Purbright shook his head. “An editor would want a much better reason than that for suppressing a news item, if you don’t mind my saying so. I’m afraid he would tell you that facts are not private property, sir. And he would be right.”

  The Chief Constable made a non-committal murmur and looked gravely wise.

  “In any case,” Purbright went on, “I think it will be just as well if the public is put on its guard. This man may have given some pretty futile performances up to now, but I think he’s dangerous—potentially dangerous, at any rate. And if we can’t warn people, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to prevent the newspapers from doing so, sir.”

  “Well, not if danger really exists, naturally.”

  “I believe it does. That is why I expect you would like me to put as many men as possible on night patrol for a while.”

  “I’m sure I can leave you to do what you consider best, Mr Purbright.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The inspector closed the folder he had been holding on his knee and stood up. He was a head taller than the Chief Constable.

  Returning to his own office, he discussed with Sergeant Love the deployment of those nocturnal unfortunates whom Love was quick to dub his ‘Crab-catchers’. They agreed that there would be no point in dissipating such meagre resources by trying to cover places like Gorry Wood. Better to give what eye they could to the housing estates within the town boundaries, with special concern for whatever had been troubling the insomniac housewives of Abdication Avenue and its vicinity.

  That night, two detectives and five constables gathered in the canteen to be briefed by the inspector.

  The detectives looked their usual nondescript selves. The men from the uniformed branch, however, had responded to the instruction to appear in plain, dark clothes by donning their best Sunday suits. They made Purbright think of a bunch of mourners, fortifying themselves with mugs of cocoa before the journey to the cemetery.

  After he had assigned them their areas of operation, the inspector told the men what little was known of the characteristics of the quarry. Related baldly, it sounded almost useless, and he noticed that several of his troop looked even more like mourners than they had before.

  “Couldn’t we take some decoys with us, sir?”

  This suggestion came from Constable Wilkinson, who rose and stood to attention while making it.

  In the ensuing murmur of jocular approval could be distinguished such remarks as “Comforts for the troops’ and “Where’s Sadie Bellweather?”

  “I think you’d better see what you can do on your own at this stage, gentlemen,” Purbright said. “I’m sorry you’ve so little to work on, but specific information is nearly always lacking in cases of this kind. Victims of sexual assault seldom make good witnesses, as you yourselves will doubtless have found...”

  He paused, aware of a certain unfortunate ambiguity in his words, and added:

  “But this time at least there seems to be general agreement on one feature—the very peculiar manner of running that your man adopts when challenged. I’m sure you will have no difficulty in recognizing it.

  “There is just one hazard of which perhaps I ought to remind you before you leave. This man has been reported as varying his more violent activities with spells of window-watching in the areas you have been given to patrol. Now then, it is right and proper that you should watch for the watcher. That is part of your job. But you will, I am sure, be aware of the unfortunate impression that would be created—not least in the minds of vigilant husbands—if your solicitude were to be observed in turn.”

  “What he means,” whispered Detective Pook to the stolid constable at his side, “is that you’re to keep your eyes off the cheesecake in the bathrooms, mate.”

  The seven policemen took their final swigs of cocoa, nodded respectful farewells to the inspector, and filed out into the night. Their duty was to end at two o’clock in the morning, which Purbright and Love had decided between them to be a reasonable upper limit to the libidinous potentialities of even the Crab.

  For the next four hours, each officer was to stroll as quietly as he was able up and down the streets of his allotted area, linger here and there in whatever concealed vantage points offered, traverse back lanes, peer into gardens and yards, avoid encounters, resist the lure of carelessly curtained windows, and stave off sleep.

  It was not the most congenial assignment he could have wished.

  Nor, in any instance, did it achieve its object.

  The night’s only excitement fell to the lot of Constable Burke.

  He had been given surveillance over a group of five interconnecting streets that formed the southern half of the Burton Lane council estate. The area was popularly, if now unjustly, known as ‘Bottle Hill’. This name had been bestowed in days when the place was garrisoned by families of quite remarkably bibulous and quarrelsome tendencies, but no more than three or four of these households had survived the twin ravages of feud and eviction order, and a comparatively conformist type of tenant was now in the majority.

  Constable Burke was aware, nevertheless, that the Cutlocks, the O’Shaunessys and the Trings still maintained some of the traditions of a more colourful era. He was not surprised, on passing the home of Grandma Tring and her brood, to hear shrieks suggestive of multiple disembowellings. Nor, when he drew near the scarred homestead known in probation circles as ‘Cutlock Castle’, was he unduly alarmed by the sight of two women trying to pull a third into a bonfire that blazed amidst the weeds of the front garden. It was a little after midnight. The constable strolled on. The prevention of cremations was not in his brief.

  What did surprise him very much was the appearance of the O’Shaunessy residence, two hundred yards farther on. With the exception of a single illuminated window on the upper floor, it was in darkness.

  Constable Burke halted and ruminated.

  He had never before seen the house at any hour of the night otherwise than lit up like a gin palace. This, one supposed, was to facilitate the drift from floor to floor and room to room of the almost perpetual parties and fights that constituted O’Shaunessy hospitality.

  Yet tonight the entire galaxy had been snuffed, but for that one lamp upstairs. More strangely still, the place was silent.

  For a moment, Constable Burke felt like the first visitor to Glencoe after the departure of the Campbells. Massacre—or perhaps plague—seemed the only possible explanation of the peace that now cloaked the neighbourhood.

  Then he glimpsed movement in the one lighted room. There was still life in the house, apparently. He crossed the road and moved slowly towards it.

  He was extremely puzzled. Were it not for the survival of that bedroom lamp, the reasonable inference would have been that the family had been obliged to fall back on its reserves by robbing the electricity meter. But the power clearly was still on. In any case, the O’Shaunessys were great improvisers: they would have set light to the staircase sooner than sit drinking in the dark.

  Consta
ble Burke was by now just outside the house, close by the front gate. And, perhaps because he was so puzzled, he committed the very error against which the inspector had carefully given warning.

  He stared up at the lighted window.

  What he saw would have immobilized much less susceptible men.

  Just beyond the undraped glass, yet as splendidly indifferent as if it had been solid brick, a young woman was hurriedly removing her clothes.

  The constable did not call out. He did not blow his whistle. He made no preparations to note down a name and address with a view to proceedings being taken. He did not even try and think of what Section of what Act was being contravened. He simply froze into grateful contemplation.

  Time, for him, ceased to exist, save perhaps as a season between jumper and skirt, an interval of hair-rumpling, a span from suspender to suspender. Minutes or years could have been going by, for all he could tell. Certainly the girl was in no haste; a less enraptured observer might have suspected that she had in mind a limit to her performance, that she was following some sort of schedule.

  No such misgivings clouded the trance of Constable Burke. He continued to stand motionless, deaf, blind to all but the occupant of the shining rectangle in the black sky.

  Her remaining garments were now at the count of two. Which next? Oh, delicious speculation. She was facing into the room. Her hand was behind her. It strayed to a point in the middle of her back. No, down now. It lingered at her waist. Ah...

  “Right! NOW!”

  The sound was like that of an exploding boiler.

  Immediately in front of Constable Burke there rose up what seemed to his confused senses to be a great column of black smoke shot with scarlet flame.

  “I’ve got him, lads!” boomed the smoke. It swooped and engulfed him with a smell of fish and whiskey. Other shapes crowded in from each side. He was on the ground, flat on his back. Objects of great weight and excruciating hardness bore down his arms and legs, apparently with the purpose of embedding them permanently in the pavement. On to his stomach descended a monument.

  The voice again roared out in command. This time, it was directed upward.

  “Right y’are, Bernadine—ye’d best be gettin’ yerself daicent now and downstairs wid ye!”

  The girl in the bedroom snatched one of her discarded garments from the floor, shielded herself behind it and drew the curtains. In other rooms of the house lights sprang on.

  They enabled Constable Burke to identify the great red face of the man who sat on his stomach and gazed in ferocious triumph from one to another of the rest of the ambuscades. He was Joseph O’Shaunessy, père—Old Dogfish himself—and those who knelt on Burke’s limbs were a muster of such sons and sons-in-law as happened currently to be out of prison.

  The constable used what breath remained in him to acquaint the O’Shaunessies of his profession and of the heinous nature of the assault they had just committed.

  The old man found this recital immensely amusing. He, he responded, was the Pope—as his sons would confirm. The sons did so.

  There followed from their father a brief but zestful account of what was proposed to be done with the man who had lurked, night after night, to spy (God forgive him) upon the modesty of good Catholic girls. At tide-time, in two hours, he would be taken aboard the family shrimping boat as far as Cat’s Head Middle, or maybe Yorking Passage, and there unladen to peep at mermaids.

  “And now,” called the old man, clambering at last from the policeman’s midriff, “let’s be havin’ ’im inside so’s yer mother can stitch some nice big stones into his pockets.”

  In possession once more of the gift of speech, Constable Burke declared again who and what he was. This time, there was more light and his face was no longer overshadowed by the anatomy of Old Dogfish. One of the sons clutched his father’s arm.

  “Holy Mother o’ God! He’s tellin’ the truth, Da. It’s a rozzer, all right, and from the station house itself!”

  Several of the others relinquished their hold on Burke and peered at him anxiously. One turned to his father and nodded. He looked disappointed, like a sportsman on learning his bird to be out of season.

  “Jaisus!” muttered the old man. He cuffed those of his retinue that were within reach, then whipped from beneath his jersey a handkerchief the size and colour of a ketch sail and with it began brushing down the constable’s jacket and trousers.

  “No harm done, sor! No harm at all. We can all make a little mistake sometimes, now can’t we, sor?”

  He gave one of his sons an affectionate kick. “And what are yous all standin’ there for, ye great gawps? Get inside wid ye and tell yer mother to have a nice cup o’ lay ready for the gentleman.”

  And so amends were made—not only with draughts of tea like concentrated wood preservative, but with lacings of ‘the hard stuff’ and genial pledges to the Boys in Blue, and smiles and dimplings from a now dressed and demure Bernadine and, as a finale, a newspaper-enwrapped lobster with compliments to the guest’s Good Lady.

  In so jolly an atmosphere, it was hardly to be expected that anybody would notice the rising of a figure from concealment near the front gate and its rapid yet curiously clumsy departure into the darkness.

  Chapter Five

  At ten o’clock the next morning, while inspector Purbright was hearing details of the first and fruitless watch for the Flaxborough Crab, a bus drew up outside the Trent Street Darby and Joan Club. Thirty-five of the members were waiting to be taken on their annual outing.

  This year’s venue was to be the old reservoir at Gosby Vale, a half-hour’s drive distant. There would be a picnic lunch, games, and a competition based on the naming of wild flowers. Lemonade a-plenty (in the terminology of the organizers) was to be available and an optimistic rumour had persisted in the club for some weeks that a crate of light ale for the gentlemen had been donated by the Flaxborough Brewery Company.

  This, indeed, was true, but the organizers had thought it politic to hide the crate in the back of the luggage compartment of the bus as a reserve benefaction. It would be withheld if circumstances suggested that undue frivolity might result.

  At the moment, no such eventuality seemed likely or even possible. There was an air of sober resignation about the party of old men and women assembled in one corner of the club concert room. Despite the warmth of the day, they were in thick outdoor clothing. All wore hats. Some, with suitcases or parcels at their feet, looked like emigrants awaiting passage to Hudson Bay.

  The chief organizer of the treat bustled into the room, rubbing his hands and saying “Fine! Fine!” over and over again. He hosed the Darbys and Joans down with his smile and inflicted a vigorous handshake upon as many as lacked the presence of mind to feign earnest search for something on the floor.

  He was Steven Winge, shipping broker, lay preacher, alderman of Flaxborough Town Council, masonic brother, and ever-jocular claimant to being ‘sixty-eight years young’.

  Hard behind Alderman Winge came his lieutenant, Miss Bertha Pollock.

  She was a short, stout woman, compactly encased in a black silk dress. She had little pointed legs and one felt that if whipped she would spin rather nicely. Her hat, which she wore everywhere, was tight as a lid and the colour of lips in heart failure.

  Miss Pollock, too, was armed with a smile.

  “Brought your knitting, dear? That’s nice.” She patted, in the manner of a dog-lover, the grey head of old Mrs Crunkinghorn.

  These preliminary greetings by Alderman Winge and Miss Pollock signalled the descent of further helpers into the flock of supine treatees. Mostly female, plump, voluble and well-heeled, but inclusive of a couple of lean men with forgiving, other-worldly faces, and hands that seemed always to be distributing invisible hymn books, these people moved among the Darbys and the Joans, shepherding, cajoling, taking away chairs, smiling the obstinate into submission, breaking with cheerfulness the groups of passive resisters, helpfully confiscating luggage—until the last straggl
ers had been manoeuvred from the room and marshalled into the waiting coach.

  The treat had begun.

  Alderman Winge and Miss Pollock occupied a double seat at the front of the coach, immediately behind the driver. They took turns throughout the journey to swivel round and review the passengers with “Everybody all right? Goo-oo-ood!” These commending surveys seemed also to have the object of a quick check on numbers, as though the possibility of escapes had not been ruled out.

  The Darbys and Joans stared impassively through the windows at streets in which most of them had spent their entire lives. Occasionally, one or another of the women would raise her fingers and wave shyly at an old acquaintance glimpsed among the shoppers. The men did not do this. Only when buildings gave way to fields and the sole spectators of the coach’s passing were mournful-eyed cows, did they relax their posture of dignified suffering and peer with interest at the countryside.