by Alan Hunter
‘I’m not interested in the way he died. I want a thorough examination of the skin of the face for spirit gum.’
‘Spirit gum!’
‘Or any other mucilage that may be present,’ added Gently generously.
There was a pause at the other end, and then Copping came back: ‘But what’s he supposed to be now — a member of a touring company?’
Gently smiled at the leaping red arrow. ‘Your guess is as good as mine…’
‘And where did you dig up the idea, anyway?’
‘Oh… it was a present for a good Central Office man. And by the way, Copping, you wouldn’t know anything of two characters called Jeff and Bonce, would you?’
‘Not to my knowledge. Are they hooked up to this business?’
‘Could be,’ admitted Gently, ‘it’s an even chance…’
There was a noise like a snort at the other end. ‘But how do you do it? I’ve been three days on this case!’
‘Just luck, you know… you need it in homicide.’
‘It looks like all the breaks were being saved up till you came. Are there any other small ways I can help?’
Gently brooded a moment. ‘There’s an amusement arcade down here… it’s called “The Feathers” and it sports a licensed bar. What do you know about that?’
‘Is that in the case too, or are you just being curious?’
‘I’ve been tailing Nits… when he’s finished collecting he makes for “The Feathers” like a homing pigeon.’
‘Well, it’s got a clean record. The proprietor is a man called Hooker — Louey Hooker. He lives in a flat at the back of the building, and he runs a bookie’s business too. The office is under the flat and fronts on Botolph Street, which runs parallel with the Front.’
‘A bookie’s business.’
‘That’s right. They’re still legal in this year of grace.’
Gently nodded at the undiscourageable arrow. ‘Well… send me Dutt along, will you? And drag that pathologist away from whatever he’s doing and put him to work.’
‘You mean tonight?’ inquired Copping in surprise.
‘We’re working, aren’t we?’ retorted Gently heartlessly.
He hung up and levered open the door of the phone-box. The year’s hit-tune, mildly interruptive till then, leaped to meet him with a vengeful roar. Gently frowned and felt in his pocket for a peppermint cream. Mr Edison, he felt, hadn’t been an unmixed blessing to mankind.
The interior of the amusement arcade was as aggressive as the exterior had promised. It was lit with a farrago of fluorescent tubes and popping bulbs, and the walls were panelled in a gooey pink plastic relieved by insets of ‘teinte de boiled cabbage’. And there was a vigorous use of chromium plate in all departments. The decor man had obviously had a flair for it. Left and right of a central aisle the machines were deployed — all the latest attractions, space-flights, atom-bombing and the rest, with a few tried favourites still making a stand against the march of science. There was the crane that picked up a prize and dropped it down a shoot, Gently noticed… at least, it picked up a prize when Nits was operating it. The halfwit had apparently got the low-down.
Stationed behind a punchball machine, Gently watched the crouched, ragged figure insert coin after coin. Each time the descending grab would seize on one of the more substantial pieces of trash in the glass case. Sometimes it failed to grasp securely and nothing would rattle down the shoot except a few gaudy-coloured sweets, but always the grab dropped plumb on a prize in the first instance.
Gently lit his pipe and continued to watch. All round him machines were ringing and clattering. Any two of that crowd could be the two in question… at any moment they might spot Nits, or Nits them. And what then? he asked himself. Suppose he was lucky and stumbled on them? What they had said to Nits might have been no more than a joke, the sort of silly thing to be said to a halfwit. Of course it was odd that they had known him, Gently, on sight… but then, the picture in the evening paper might have jogged their memories. There had been bigger and better pictures of him in the same paper the year before.
No, he told himself, it wasn’t much better than a hunch, after all …
The music changed to something plaintive and caressing, and as though it were a signal Nits crammed his collection of ballpoints and flash jewellery into his pockets and darted to the door. Gently moved forward also, but the halfwit came to a standstill short of the entrance, so he slid back again into the cover of the punch-ball machine. Was Nits expecting someone? It rather seemed like it. He stood by the door, apparently trembling, and strained his protruding eyes in the direction of the Wellesley Pier. Several people came in, but these were ignored. Nits didn’t even glance at them as they pushed past. Then he gave a little whimper and a skip, like a dog sighting its master, and a moment later the object of his vigil appeared.
She was a blonde, a tall, big-bodied blonde. She didn’t have to broadcast her vocation, either to Gently or the world. She wore a sleeveless green silk blouse, high-heels and a black hobble skirt, and walked with a flaunt that looked vaguely expensive.
‘Geddart,’ she said to Nits in the husky voice of sin, ‘keep away from me, you dirty liddle so-and-so — how many more times must I tell you?’
‘I’ve been a good boy!’ piped Nits, frisking and cringing beside her as she hipped down the arcade.
‘I don’d care — jusd keep away from me.’
‘I got something — I got something! Look for you!’ Nits pulled out his hoard of swag and tried to thrust it into the blonde’s hands, but she snatched them away and the stuff tinkled on to the floor.
‘I don’t wand it!’ she yelped, ‘keep your dirdy muck to yourself! Don’d ever come near me again!’ And she bustled away through the grinning crowd, leaving Nits to scrabble amongst the feet for his scattered treasure.
‘That’s my gal, Frenchy!’ shouted someone, ‘don’t you have him if you don’t fancy him!’
The blonde turned back and said something so filthy that even Gently was taken aback, then she swaggered through the swing-doors of the bar.
‘Whoo-whoo!’ was the cry, ‘Frenchy’s got the answer, don’t you forget it!’
On the floor Nits chattered and sobbed with rage. ‘I’ll kill you — I’ll kill you!’ he babbled, ‘I’ve been a good boy — I have — I have!’
Gently stooped and rescued a plastic ballpoint from under the heel of a bystander. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘one you missed.’
Nits seized it and stuffed it into his pocket after the others. ‘I’ll kill you!’ he whispered in an ecstasy of passion.
‘Did she know him?’ asked Gently, ‘did she know the man who wouldn’t wake up?’
Nits’s green eyes burned at him like two malignant lamps and Gently, moving swiftly, moved only just in time. As it was the leaping halfwit sent his trilby flying. Then, recovering himself, Nits dived for the door and his turn of speed was something that Gently could only have sighed for in his palmiest days…
CHAPTER THREE
The bar was rather a contrast to the rest of the establishment. It had got missed out when the wielder of plastic and chromium-plate had gone his merry way. It was quite a large place and its dim, parchmented lighting made it seem larger still. It was also irregular in shape. There were corners of it that tucked away, and other corners which had been given an inglenook treatment. Opposite the swing-doors ran the bar counter, its supporting shelves well fledged with opulent looking bottles, and to the left of the counter was a door marked ‘Private’. Further left again was a small exit door, leading probably into a side-street.
Gently eased himself through the swing-doors and stood still for a moment, adjusting his vision to the drop in candle-power. It seemed a fairly well-patronized place. Most of the tables and nookeries were occupied, and there were several customers perched on high stools at the counter. Also it seemed quiet in there, but that may have been due only to comparison with the racket going on outside the swing-doors.
He strolled across to the counter, where the blonde was taking charge of a noggin of straight gin.
‘Chalk id up, Artie,’ she crooned, ‘and no chiselling, mind.’
‘Who shall I chalk it up to?’ asked the ferrety bartender with a wink.
‘Don’d be cheeky, Artie — Louey don’d like it!’
She slunk away from the counter, and her eye fell on Gently for the first time. She recognized him, he knew — there was just that much of alert interrogation in her glance — and for a moment he thought she would say something. Then she shrugged a scantily-clad shoulder, gave her head a little toss, and swung away across the room to one of the nookeries.
Gently seated himself on a high stool and ordered an orange-squash.
‘Who is she, Artie?’ he asked the ferrety bartender.
Artie gave the squash-bottle a practised twist. ‘Don’t ask me — ask her,’ he retorted sullenly.
‘But I am asking you. What’s her name?’
‘It’s Frenchy — and I’m not her boyfriend.’
‘Her other name, Artie.’
‘I’m telling you I don’t know!’
‘She mentioned a Louey…’
‘What’s that got to do with me?’
‘She spoke as though you knew him…’
‘Well, I don’t. He must be someone new.’
Gently drank a mouthful of orange-squash and appeared to be losing himself in contemplation of the fruit-scum collected at the mouth of his glass.
‘That’ll be a bob,’ said Artie, ‘if you don’t mind.’
Gently drank some more and was still interested in the fruit-scum. ‘You know, it’s amazing,’ he said casually, ‘the number of people round here who know me without me knowing them… you seem to be the fifth, Artie, by my computation.’
The ferrety one stiffened. ‘Don’t know what you mean by that…’
‘Never mind, never mind,’ said Gently soothingly, ‘we’ll go into it some other time, shall we?’ He slid off his stool and picked up the part-drunk glass of orange-squash.
‘Hey!’ clamoured Artie, ‘that’s still got to be paid for…!’
‘Chalk it up,’ returned Gently, ‘and no chiselling, mind. Louey don’d like it…’
He ambled over to a small table by the wall and pulled up a seat with better padding than the high stool. There were other eyes on him besides Artie’s; several customers at the counter had heard the conversation, and now turned to watch the bulky figure cramming itself into its chair. Not only at the counter either… out of the corner of his eye Gently could see Frenchy in her nookery, and two other figures near her. They were all giving him their attention…
‘’Ere!’ whispered a sporty-looking individual to Artie, ‘is that geezer a busy?’
‘Yard,’ clipped Artie from the corner of his mouth.
The sporty-looking type favoured Gently with a bloodshot leer. ‘Nice bleedin’ company we get here these days…’
Gently quaffed on imperturbably. He might have been entirely alone in the bar, so oblivious did he seem. He took out his pipe and emptied it with care into the ashtray; then he took out his tobacco and stuffed the bowl with equal care.
‘’E’s set in for the night,’ said the sporty-looking individual, ‘blimey, you’ll have to look sharp with them shutters at closing-time …’
‘Why don’t you offer him a light?’ quipped his neighbour.
‘What, me — and him a busy? Give us another nip, Artie… there’s a smell round here I don’t like…’
Gently, however, lit his own pipe, and having lit it he entertained his audience with a scintillating display of smoke-rings. He could blow them single, double and treble, with combinations and variations. He had infinite patience, too. If one of his airy designs went wrong he had all the time in the world to try it out again…
The private door beside the bar opened and a man in seedy evening-dress appeared. He was a heavily built type of about forty with dark hair, a parrot-shaped face, and little pale eyes set very close together, and he smoked a cigarette in a gold-plated holder about as long as his arm. Gently surveyed him with mild interest through a pyramid of smoke. Faces of that shape must at all times be rarities, he thought.
‘Oi — Peachey!’ yipped the sporty-looking individual, and made a cautionary face while he thumbed over his shoulder in Gently’s direction. Artie also hastened to breathe a word in the newcomer’s ear. The man’s two pale eyes reached Gently, paused and strayed uneasily away again. Gently’s own slipped round to Frenchy. She was sitting up straight and shaking her peroxide head.
‘Louey wants a fresh bottle,’ said the newcomer hoarsely, ‘gimme a white-label.’
Artie produced one from under the counter and handed it to him. He dived clumsily back through the door. Artie returned to his business of serving drinks without a further glance at Gently; there was an expression of satisfied malice on his face…
‘You loog lonely for a big man,’ said a voice at Gently’s elbow, and he turned his head to see that Frenchy had slunk over to his table. She was smiling, at least with her mouth. Higher up it didn’t show so much — by the time one got to her rather pretty warm-brown eyes it had gone completely. But she was smiling with her mouth.
Gently smiled too, somewhere between the South Lightship and Scurby Sands.
‘I’m not lonely,’ he said, ‘there’s too many people around who know me.’
Frenchy laughed, a throaty little gurgle. ‘Thad’s because the big man is famous… he geds his picture in the paper.’
‘You think that makes people notice? Such a bad picture?’
‘But of course… nobody talks about anything else except whad the police are doing.’
She pulled up another chair and sat down, not opposite Gently but to the side, where the table didn’t hide anything. She slid forward and crossed her legs. They weren’t terribly attractive, he noticed. The skin was a trifle coarse and the contours inclined to be knobbly — they were designed for strength rather than quality. But she managed them well, they were crossed with great competence. And the hobble skirt contrived to lose itself somewhere above the knee.
‘Id musd be exciding,’ she crooned, ‘hunding down a murderer…’
Gently breathed an unambitious little smoke-ring.
‘And difficuld too… especially one like this.’
Gently breathed two more, one exactly inside the other.
‘I mean,’ she continued, ‘where does one begin to loog if one doesn’d know his name…?’
‘What’s your name?’ inquired Gently suddenly; ‘all they call you round here is Frenchy.’
The brown eyes opened wide and the smile tailed off: but it was back again in a moment, and wider than ever.
‘Surely you don’d suspecd me, Inspecdor…’
‘I’m just asking your name.’
‘Bud why should you wand to know thad…?’
‘I’m curious, like all policemen.’
Frenchy seemed to consider the matter between half-closed lids. Gently stared at the table and smoked a few more puffs.
‘If you wand to ask questions…’ she began.
Gently favoured her with a glance.
‘There are bedder places than this to ask them…’
She leaned forward over the table and balanced her chin in the palm of her hand. In effect the green silk blouse became an open peep-show.
‘Afder all, it’s your dudy,’ she melted, ‘and you know when girls dalk the besd…’
Gently sighed and felt in his pocket for a match. ‘You’re not local,’ he said, ‘you’ve had West End training… who brought you down here?’
For a moment he thought her scarlet nails were going to leap at his face. They angled for a strike, and the brown eyes burned with the merciless ferocity of a cat’s. Then the fingers relaxed and the eyes narrowed.
‘You filthy b- cop!’ she hissed, all accent spent, ‘I wouldn’t let you touch me if you were the last bloody screw on
God’s earth, and that’s the stinking truth!’
Gently shrugged and struck himself a fresh light. ‘Where do you live?’ he asked.
‘Bloody well find out!’
‘Tut, tut, my dear… it would save unnecessary police-work if you told me.’
‘Well I’m not going to…!’
Gently held up a restraining hand. ‘It doesn’t really matter… now about our friend with the beard.’
She stopped in mid-flow, though whether on account of his casual remark or not Gently wasn’t able to decide.
‘Where did you meet him — here or in London?’
‘Who?’ she demanded sullenly.
‘The deceased — the man who was stabbed.’
‘Me!’ she burst out, ‘what have I got to do with it?’
‘I don’t know,’ murmured Gently, ‘I thought perhaps that was what you came across to tell me…’
Frenchy riposted with a stream of adjectives that fairly blistered the woodwork.
‘Still, you might like to tell me about your movements on Tuesday night…’ added Gently thoughtfully.
There was a pause, pregnant but not silent — silence was a strictly comparative term when only a pair of swing-doors separated them from the uproar without — and Gently occupied it usefully by prodding around in his pipe, which wasn’t on its best behaviour. Over at the counter, he noticed, they were straining their ears to catch a word of what was taking place. And in Frenchy’s nook two figures in the shadows leaned intently in his direction…
‘You can’t drag me into this, and you bloody well know it!’ seethed Frenchy, with the aid of two other words. ‘I never knew him — I didn’t do nothing — I don’t know nothing!’
Gently tapped his refractory pipe in the ashtray and drew on it tentatively.
‘It’s true!’ she spat, ‘why do you pick on me — who’s been lying about me?’
‘Who might lie about you?’ inquired Gently absently.
‘How should I know? — anyone! A girl’s got enemies. And I’ve got a right to know, haven’t I? If someone’s been making accusations-!’
‘Nobody has accused anybody… yet.’
‘Then what’s it all about?’
