by Alan Hunter
‘A nice day for a picnic,’ suggested Gently cautioningly.
‘I was going round the links… if I’d got away early enough.’
Gently shrugged. ‘Something always turns up… it’s the bright day that brings forth the adder.’
But Copping sniffed and would not be comforted.
Bonce was brought in, as wild-eyed as ever, and scrubbing recently-inked fingers on the seat of his cheap trousers. Jeff pulled himself together a little at the sight of his henchman, as though conscious of a sudden that he was cutting a poor figure. Gently glanced at Dutt, who shook his head.
‘Not this one, sir. Nothing like.’
‘Are you sure of that?’ asked Gently in surprise.
‘Positive, sir.’
‘Well… they’re not supposed to lie! Sit down, Baines. You can wash your hands later on.’
Bonce sat down automatically in the chair indicated to him. He had an air of bereftness, as though he had lost all will of his own. His mouth was hanging a little open and his face had a boiled look. His eyes resolutely refused to focus on anything more distant than the blunt tip of his freckled nose.
Gently pondered this woebegone figure without expression.
‘Robert Henry Baines of seventeen Kittle Witches Grid?’
Bonce nodded twice as though the question had operated a spring.
Gently cautioned him at some length, though it seemed doubtful if what he was saying penetrated very clearly into Bonce’s shocked and bewildered mind.
‘I’m going to ask you one question, Baines, and it’s entirely up to you whether you answer it or not. You understand me?’
The spring was operated again. Gently paused with his pencil at one corner of his pad.
‘I want you to tell me, Baines… if you assisted Wylie when, on the night of Tuesday last, he entered a rear bedroom of 52 Blantyre Road and removed from there a suitcase containing United States treasury notes.’
‘Don’t tell him, Bonce!’ screamed Jeff, leaping to his feet, ‘don’t tell him, you bloody little fool!’
‘Silence!’ thundered Gently in a voice that made even Dutt wince, ‘get back in your chair, Wylie!’
‘But it’s a lie… he’ll say anything…!’
‘Get back in your chair!’
Copping sent the Teddy boy sprawling into his seat again and held him there struggling and panting.
‘Now, Baines… have you anything to answer?’
Bonce gaped and gurgled in his throat, his eyes rolling pitiably. Then the spring clicked and his head began to nod. ‘I went with him… it’s true… I kept watch in the alley…’
‘You fool — oh, you bloody little fool!’ sobbed Jeff, ‘don’t you understand it’s murder they’re after us for — don’t you understand it’s murder?’
There was a ripping sound as Gently’s pencil crossed from one corner of the pad to the other.
The charge was made: burglary on the night of the eleventh. Jeff was in tears as he gave his statement. Of the two of them, it was Bonce who showed the better front. Having shed the intolerable load of conscious guilt he seemed to stiffen up and gain some sort of control of himself, while Jeff, on the other hand, went more and more to pieces. It was from Bonce that Gently received the more coherent picture.
They had been in ‘The Feathers’ late on the Tuesday evening when the prostitute Frenchy entered. She was well known to them — Jeff claimed to have slept with her and Bonce wasn’t sure that Jeff hadn’t — and she approached them with the information that a man-friend of hers had left in his bedroom a suitcase containing something of considerable value.
‘Was she in the habit of divulging such information?’ queried Gently.
Jeff stoutly denied it, but Bonce admitted one or two instances.
‘And were you accustomed to act on it?’
Bonce hung his head. ‘Once we did…’
Frenchy had struck a quick bargain. They would go halves in whatever the loot realized. She gave them the address, explained the situation of the bedroom and guaranteed to keep the man busy for another hour or two at least. When she left they followed her at a discreet distance and saw her meet a man resembling the one in the photograph. He had exchanged a few words with her and then signalled a taxi. The taxi had departed in the direction of the North Shore.
‘Where did the taxi pick them up?’ asked Gently.
‘It was just outside the Marina.’
‘What would have been the time?’
Bonce glanced at Jeff. ‘About ten, I should think.’
‘Would you know the taxi again?’
‘N-no, sir, there wan’t nothin’ special about it.’
‘From which direction did it come?’
‘From the Pleasure Beach way, sir.’
The owner of the suitcase having been seen on his way, they hastened round to Blantyre Road and identified No. 52. Then they approached it by the back alley and while Bonce kept watch outside, Jeff broke into the rear bedroom.
‘Weren’t you taking a bit of a risk?’ inquired Gently of Jeff. ‘The lodger may have been out, but it’s pretty certain the landlady wasn’t.’
‘We could see them down below,’ sniffed Jeff, ‘they were watching the telly.’
‘The television couldn’t have had much longer to go by the time you got there.’
‘It’s the truth, I tell you!’
‘All right, all right — just answer my questions! It may have been running late on Tuesday. How long did it take you to do the job?’
‘Ten minutes… quarter of an hour, perhaps.’
‘No longer than that?’ Gently glanced at Bonce.
‘That’s about it, sir.’
‘But you had to hunt around for it?’
‘Why should I?’ sniffed Jeff, ‘I knew what I was looking for… a blue suitcase with chromium locks. It was standing with the other one near the wardrobe.’
‘Did you look in the other one?’
‘No… I never touched it.’
‘Didn’t you go through the drawers or anything of that sort?’
‘I tell you I didn’t touch anything! I just got what I came for and went. Ask him if I aren’t telling the truth.’
Bonce corroborate his leader’s statement — he had returned with the blue suitcase and nothing else. They had carried it off to a quiet spot in Blantyre Gardens, forced the locks and discovered the astounding contents. Immediately there was a change of plans. Jeff decided they would tell Frenchy that they had been unable to find the suitcase — a proposition she wasn’t situated to contradict — while in reality they would keep it hidden until the hue and cry had died down and then dispose of it by slow and cautious degrees. This they did, and for some reason Frenchy accepted their story without much fuss. When the murder became news and they recognized the pictures which were issued as being of Frenchy’s man-friend, they had an additional incentive for keeping the stolen notes under cover. Unfortunately, their patience was soon exhausted. A financial crisis at the end of the week had slackened their caution. Surely, they had thought, there could be no harm in cashing just one of that inexhaustible pile of notes… just one, to see them comfortably through the weekend…
Gently sighed at the end of the recital. ‘And the rest of them, where are they now?’
Bonce swallowed and glanced again at Jeff. ‘They’re under the pier.’
‘Which pier is that?’
‘Albion Pier… there’s a hole between two girders.’
‘You’d better show me… Dutt!’
‘Yessir?’
‘Tell them to bring a car round, will you?’ He returned to Bonce. ‘That evening… in the bar at “The Feathers”… were all the usual crowd there?’
Bonce twisted his snub nose perplexedly. ‘I–I suppose so, sir.’
‘Was Artie serving at the bar?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’
‘That fellow who wears loud checks and lives on whisky?’
‘Yes, sir.’
&nb
sp; ‘Louey?’
‘N-no, sir… you don’t often see him in the bar.’
‘Peachey?’
‘I think he looked in while we were talking to Frenchy…’
There was the sound of a car swinging out of the yard and Copping rose to his feet. He looked at Gently questioningly and motioned to the two youths with his head. ‘Cuffs on them… just to keep on the safe side?’
Gently smiled amongst the nebulae. ‘Let’s be devils this morning, shall we? Let’s take a risk!’
Exceeding Sunday-white lay the Albion Pier under mid-morning sun. Its two square towers, each capped with gold, notched firmly into an azure sky and its peak-roofed pavilion, home of Poppa Pickle’s Pierrots, notched equally firmly into a green-and-amethyst sea. Its gates were closed. They were not to open till half past two. The brightly dressed strollers, each infected in some degree by the prevailing Sundayness, were constrained to the languid buying of ice-cream, the indifferent booking of seats or the bored contemplation of Poppa Pickle’s Pierrots’ pics. They didn’t complain. They knew it was their lot. Being English, one was never at a loss for a moral attitude.
Even the arrival of a police car with three obvious plain-clothes men and two obvious wrong-doers didn’t seriously upset the moral atmosphere, though it may have intensified it a little.
‘Which end?’ inquired Gently, shepherding his flock down the steps to the beach.
‘This end… up here where the pier nearly touches the sand.’
They marched laboriously through soft dry sand, the cynosure for an increasing number of eyes. Dutt led the way, the Teddy boys followed, and Copping and Gently brought up the rear. Under the pier they went, where the sand was cold and grey. A forest of dank and rusty piles enclosed them in an echoing twilight.
‘Up there,’ snuffled Jeff, indicating a girder which nearly met the sand, ‘there’s another one joins it behind… it’s in the gap between them.’
‘Get it out,’ ordered Gently to Dutt.
The gallant sergeant went down on his stomach and squirmed vigorously till he was under the girder. Then he turned on his back and began feeling in the remote obscurity beyond. He seemed to be prying there for an unconscionable length of time.
‘Have you found the hole?’ asked Gently, his voice echoing marinely amongst the piles.
‘Yessir,’ came muffledly from Dutt, ‘hole’s there, sir… it’s what’s in it I aren’t sure about… couldn’t get hold of me legs and pull me out, sir?’
Copping went to the rescue and a grimy Dutt renewed acquaintance with the light of day. In his arms he bore a bundle, also grimy. ‘This is all there was, sir… ain’t no trace of any suitcase.’
‘Open it!’ snapped Gently.
Copping broke the string and unwrapped the paper. There lay revealed a crumpled grey suit, a pair of two-colour shoes, shirt, socks, underclothes, suspenders and a blue bow tie.
‘Sakes alive!’ exclaimed Copping. ‘Look at this label — Klingelschwitz — it’s the same as in the boyo’s suit!’
‘And look at this shirt,’ added Gently grimly, ‘four nicely grouped stab-holes… same as in the boyo’s thorax.’
A sugary thump made them all turn sharply. It was Jeff going out cold on a sand that was even colder.
CHAPTER NINE
It was a hefty lunch for a hot day and Gently followed Dutt’s example of shedding his jacket and rolling his sleeves up. There wasn’t any frippery about it. Just straight roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and vegetables followed by hot apple turnover with custard. But either Mrs Davis was a demon cook, or else the Starmouth ozone had really come into its own that day… there wasn’t much in the way of conversation for quite some time.
‘Superintendents!’ muttered Gently at last, evaluating the remains of the turnover with sad resignation.
‘Never alters,’ agreed Dutt sympathetically, cutting an absent-minded slice.
‘I can’t help coming to the conclusion, Dutt…’
‘Yessir?’
‘… if it didn’t savour of insubordination…’
‘Aye, aye!’ Dutt winked at his superior over a spoonful of juicy pastry. ‘Don’t have to say it, sir. I knows well enough what you mean.’
Gently picked up his plate and placed it at some distance from himself, as though finally to sever connections with that beguiling turnover. ‘You make a pinch… you dig up some evidence… it does something to them. They’re all the same, Dutt.’
‘Yessir. Noticed it.’
‘They suddenly turn impatient. It’s an occupational disease with superintendents. At a certain stage in the proceedings they get the charge-lust. They want to charge someone. And if there’s half a case against anybody it’s the devil’s own job to head a super off and make him be a good boy…’
‘Don’t we know it, sir?’
Gently drew a deep breath and pulled out his familiar sandblast. ‘Of course, you have to admit it… there’s enough on Baines and Wylie to make the average super sit up and howl blue murder. But at the same time, it only needs the average forensic eye. Baines isn’t a liar, for instance, and Wylie’s got too scared to lie. No, Dutt, no. Our super is doing himself no good by tearing the bricks apart at the Wylie’s. He won’t find anything, and he won’t improve his standing with anyone.’
Mrs Davis brought in their cuppa, making room for the tray beside Gently. She hesitated on seeing the chief inspector’s pipe on the point of being lit and then produced, from nowhere as it seemed, a capacious glass ashtray. Gently nodded a solemn acknowledgement. Mrs Davis beamed at the still-eating Dutt. ‘Aren’t you going down to the beach now this afternoon, Inspector?’
Gently smiled wanly and unbonneted the teapot.
‘Well, sir… what do you make of them clothes turning up like that?’ queried Dutt when the tea was poured and Mrs Davis had retired.
‘They were planted deliberately, Dutt. By the person who lifted the suitcase.’
‘But how did they know where it was, sir?’
‘By deduction and observation — just as we find out things.’ Gently doused a match and took one or two comfortable pulls. ‘Obviously… they wanted that suitcase back. Whether they still intended to use the money or not we don’t know, but they feel it’s important that a large consignment of it shouldn’t be lying around loose… it would almost inevitably finish up in our hands. So their first move after settling with Max was to recover the suitcase and I can imagine they were a little upset to find it missing when they got to his lodgings…’
‘Lord luvvus, sir — that other set of prints! I’ve been puzzling my loaf about them all the morning.’
‘Exactly, Dutt… the first little slip our friends seem to have made. But I don’t suppose they aimed to be around when those prints came to light. It was just a bit of bad luck that the suitcase had vanished into thin air…’
‘So it was them who ransacked the room, sir.’
‘Undoubtedly.’
‘On account of he may have hidden the stuff somewhere.’ ‘It was a possibility they wouldn’t overlook.’
Dutt gave a little chuckle. ‘You’re right, sir… their faces must have dropped a mile when they found the cupboard was bare!’
‘A good mile, Dutt, and possibly two. It upset all their calculations. It meant they would have to hang around and look for it instead of getting to hell out of the country… and hanging around would get to be more and more dangerous as the investigation went on. At first, I imagine, they hadn’t a clue about it. They may have visited the bedroom more than once and they were certainly interested to know what we found when we got there… and then, of course, they began to think it out and perhaps make some inquiries. They found out, or possibly they knew, that Max had been consorting with Frenchy… that was an obvious lead. No doubt they gave her flat a going-over. They might even have questioned her. But there was no suitcase at the flat, and all that Frenchy could tell them — even if she came clean — was of Jeff and Bonce’s allegedly fruitless attem
pt to get the suitcase… Anyway, they got on to Jeff and Bonce somehow. It wouldn’t have been too difficult if they checked up on Frenchy.’
‘And then they kept them under observation, sir?’
‘Just as we would have done, Dutt.’
‘And last night they found out where the case was hidden — and left the clothes there for a false scent, sir?’
Gently nodded pontifically. ‘A false scent for a charge-happy super.’
Dutt swallowed a mouthful of tea and looked a little dubiously at the remaining shoulder of apple turnover. ‘Just one thing, sir…’
‘Yes, Dutt?’
‘I don’t want to seem critical, sir…’
‘Don’t be modest, Dutt — just come to the point.’
‘Well, sir, what I want to say is, how did they know we was ever going to find them clothes, let alone connect them with the Teddy boys?’
Gently nodded again and smiled around his pipe. ‘That’s what we want to know, isn’t it, Dutt. That’s going to be the clincher!’
He rose from the table and went over to Mrs Davis’s telephone. The phonebook lay beside it. He flicked through it and traced down a column with a clumsy finger.
‘Starmouth 75629… this is Chief Inspector Gently.’ He tilted the instrument to one side so that Dutt could hear too. ‘Biggers? There’s something else I want to ask you, Biggers… yes, about last night.’
‘Ho yes, sir?’ came the publican’s anxious voice from the other end.
‘You told us in your statement that after you had changed the note you heard there were some counterfeit ones going about. I want to know where you obtained that information.’
‘Yes, sir! Certainly, sir! It was a bloke in the bar what told me that.’
‘A bloke you know?’
‘Ho no, sir. Quite a stranger.’
‘He was in the bar at the time of the transaction?’
‘No, sir, not as I remember. The first time I noticed him there was when the young feller went out.’
‘You mean he came in while the transaction was in progress?’
‘Must’ve done, sir, ’cause he soon ups and tells me to watch my step with regard to Yank money. “Wasn’t that a hundred-dollar bill?” he says. “Ah, it was,” I says. “Then it’s ten to one you’ve been had,” he says, or words to that effect, “there was a sailor got copped with some this afternoon.”’
