Tuppenny Hat Detective

by Brian Sellars

  Listening with all his concentration, Billy heard the sounds of movement, then a deep muffled voice. Whose it was, or what was said, he could not tell. Perhaps whoever owned the bed and the medals had come back and found Stan invading his home? Or, he hoped, it could be the police. He knew there were two constables patrolling the area. Perhaps they had heard Stan and come to investigate. He prayed it was the police. Having to explain his presence under the chapel would certainly get him into all sorts of trouble, but it was better than roasting alive.

  Again, he heard a man's voice. It was a soft low mumbling sound, too faint to form into words.

  Stan's voice however, was distinct and fearful. 'You!' he cried. 'I told you I won't tell nobody, I swear. You don't have to worry about me.'

  Billy wished he could see what was going on. Apart from the now fading glow of Stan's burning newspaper on the cellar walls he could see nothing, not even shadows. Suddenly there was a loud crack. The sound punched painfully into Billy's eardrums. He heard Stan Sutcliffe yelp like a hurt puppy dog - then silence.

  Breathless, deathly silence fell on the darkness. Billy felt as if his ears were stuffed with cotton wool. He grabbed his trembling dog and hugged him. Was it a gun shot? What was going on? It sounded like gunfire, but how would he know?

  Ruff snuggled up to Billy's chest, whimpering. Billy tried to comfort him, feeling he needed the dog's quick warmth and company every bit as much as the poor creature needed him. He had no idea what had happened, but expected somebody very dangerous to come poking into the tunnel at any moment. If someone had shot Stan, it could be his turn next. Grasping his dog under one arm, he scurried backwards down the tunnel to the alcove, as fast as his bloodied knees would carry him. Pressing himself deep inside the alcove, he pulled an army blanket and some the remaining old newspapers over him and placed a hand on Ruff's muzzle, praying he could keep him quiet.

  Through a tiny gap in his camouflage, he saw the light of a powerful torch beam flash along the tunnel walls. There was the sound of wheezy breathing, as if someone was struggling to climb inside. Then silence. Billy waited, hardly daring to breath. His body ached. He desperately needed to stretch his limbs, but dare not move. Concentrating on the slightest sounds, he waited, passing the time in terror.

  How long he waited, he had no idea. The memory of Stan's short and terrifying scream still played in his head. What had happened? What would he find if ever he managed to escape his stone tomb?

  At length he plucked up courage to push his head a little way out of the imagined security of his cocoon of newspapers and blankets. He peered down towards the boiler room. All was silent and dark. Stan's firebrand had fizzled out. Nothing moved. There had not been a sound since the wheezy intruder, yet still Billy waited, breathing silently, his senses straining the air for clues of anything that would help him to build a picture of what might await him.

  The faintest glow, a mere grain above darkness, began to outline the tunnel's entrance. Billy studied it, trying to confirm that it was real light and not merely a fading impression on his retina, but no, it was light, he told himself. Dawn was at last seeping down, even into the hidden corners of the old boiler room. Night was ending, and somehow he had survived it, so far. He thanked heaven for that, though his relief was short lived. For he quickly realised that dawn would bring him more trouble. Somehow, he had to get away and creep back into his bed before his mother went into his room to wake him. How would he explain his filthy clothes and scratched hands and knees? He sagged gloomily, wishing he had never fetched that ball from the Star Woman's back yard.

  With weary caution, he crawled towards the tunnel entrance, stopping frequently to listen for any sounds. At last, he stuck his head out into the boiler room. There was Stan's body, stretched out on the floor, face down. Sooty water hid one eye. The other, wide open, stared at the boiler room's shattered door. It was as if Stan had watched his killer leave as he breathed his dying gasp.

  Billy climbed down to the filthy floor and stretched his painful limbs. He stood over Stan's corpse trying to work out what might have happened. The sound of the day's first trams rattling past, intruded. They seemed bold and loud now that dawn was brushing even the darkest alcoves of the new day.

  There was no doubt about it - Stan was dead. This time there was no need to poke around taking pulses. His mouth was mostly under water. If he had been alive, he would have been blowing bubbles. He could see no blood. The wound must be underneath him, on his front. Billy tiptoed past the corpse and made a dash for the door, almost tripping over the dog who was every bit as anxious to get away.

  Outside in the chilled air, dawn was brightening the eastern sky. Brash, fluting trams pounded their silver rails, scooping up clutches of cigarette smoking steel workers to take them to their six-o-clock shifts. The day was starting with no mind to the horrors of the night. Sparrows clamoured about the chapel yard. Cats stalked, dogs barked from yards and gardens. Heavy boots ground on cobbles, beating out their random rhythms, and a young man lay dead in a pool of sooty slime.

  Not all detective work would be fun; Billy had expected that. But now, he reminded himself, in just a matter of a few weeks he had seen two corpses, both brutally murdered. The terrifying realisation that someone was out there, killing people, and for reasons that still eluded him, impressed itself chillingly. He'd put Yvonne at risk too. How could he protect her? He had blubbed like a baby when he thought that Stan was going to burn him. What sort of protector did that make him?

  What had he started? What could he possibly do against people with secrets and guns; people who coldly killed for their own unknowable reasons. He was facing grown ups, free to go wherever they like, and do whatever they wanted. What could he do against that? And, if by some lucky accident he did manage to get close to the killer, he too would most likely end up drinking sooty slime like poor Stan Sutcliffe. He and Yvonne were going to have to face facts - make some grown up decisions. But for now, that would have to wait. The great detective had to somehow sneak home before his mother found him missing.

  The back-naks offered the safest route, he decided. If he went onto the streets at this time of day he was certain to meet his dad, or if not him many a man who could tell his dad that they'd seen him. Back-nacking, scroamin through people's back yards, would keep him out of sight. The last thing he wanted was another confrontation with his father.

  From a thick stand of lilac in the chapel yard, he waited, watching the men chatting at the tram stop opposite, cigarette smoke hazing the bubble of banter around them. The chill dawn carried their voices, low and friendly, and rippled with laughter. Their faces looked pink and scrubbed beneath flat caps, their white cotton sweat towels tied about their throats. A tram slid up to the stop and scooped them away. The street was quiet again, and he could set off on his secret way home. Ruff would follow or fend for himself.

  Unseen, another watched that morning. He saw Billy climb the first wall into the back gardens of the houses beside the chapel. He would have to quickly fetch his few belongings before the boiler room filled with police. They were sure to be around soon.

  *

  Battered, dazed and feeling so far out of his depth that nothing made sense, or offered the least bit of comfort, Billy lay on his bed staring blankly at the hairline cracks in his bedroom ceiling. Images of all he had seen in the last few weeks formed and reformed in the chaotic patterns of crazed whitewash: corpses staring, gaping and cackling, gun-fire in his head, blood squirting from the old lady's toasting fork rack and sliming itself into words on paper, words with voices and ghostly weeping.

  Annabel's tragic death was twisting everything out of shape. Death brought life sharply into focus. The detective game, however well intentioned, had become real and dangerous beyond all expectation. It seemed as if corpses were cropping up at every turn. Mysteries were weaving themselves around objects and stray events like ivy up a tree. They sprouted and spread, rapidly enveloping everything, veiling and dis
torting the truth.

  ………

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Waiting for the police to find Stan's body had Billy on tenterhooks, driving him into sullen isolation in his room. At any moment, he expected his world to come crashing down. Two days had passed since Stan's brutal murder: two days on which Yvonne had knocked at his door several times to ask his mother if he could come out and play. Mrs Perks had explained that her son was not well. She said he had fallen, badly skinning his hands and knees, and was sick and off his food.

  'If he doesn't buck up today, I'm getting the doctor.'

  Finally, Billy could stand the waiting no longer. As soon as his mother left for work, he dressed, swilled his face at the kitchen sink, flattened his hair with a slick of soap bubbles, and ran out of his house to go to the telephone box. He would make an anonymous call to the police, but would disguise his voice, and be off the phone quickly, before they could trace the call, as he'd seen on the cinema screen.

  He planned to disguise his voice by mimicking an Irish priest he knew, but first he needed two pennies for the phone box. It would be safer to make a call directly to the police station, rather than to risk making a free nine-nine-nine call. He remembered that when they had telephoned to report the old lady's death, the emergency operator had made them repeat everything. It had taken ages. This time, he was determined his call would be short and impossible to trace. He would tell them where to find Stan, and then put the phone down. He would not be caught out by their questions, or tricked into hanging on.

  He searched, but there were no coins lying around the house. The old tea caddy in the kitchen contained a ten-shilling note. He might as well commit suicide as take that. Granny Smeggs would certainly give him the money, but only if he told her what it was for. That would mean lying to her. He didn't want to do that – though only because she always tricked him and found him out. Anyway, he told himself, it didn't matter. Getting a few coppers would be easy, but it would involve a shameful deception; one he vowed to undo at the first opportunity.

  Old Pop Meaks kept a corner shop. It was scruffy and stank of cats. At least six of the evil brutes gazed imperiously from the tops of glass lidded biscuit tins and boiled sweets' jars on old Pop's counter top. In the yard behind the shop, wooden crates of Tizer, Dandelion and Burdock, and lemonade bottles were stacked for collection by the distributor. Like the shameful thief he had become, Billy stole into the yard, and soundlessly removed an empty Tizer bottle. After a moment to compose himself, he calmly strolled into Pop Meak's shop and placed the bottle on the counter. The old man smiled warmly and dutifully paid him two pennies.

  With coins in his pocket, and feeling that everyone in the street was looking at him, accusing him of being a heartless thief who would take the very milk out of a blind man's tea, he ran to make his call. Near the telephone box at the end of the street the butcher was hanging rabbits on his window rail. Billy felt he glared at him accusingly, as if warning him never to place his thieving feet inside his shop.

  He found Mr Wragg in the telephone box, a clipboard of printed forms in his hand. Billy groaned, but not because he expected the call to be a long one, but because Mr Wragg was the fishmonger and would leave the phone box stinking of fish.

  Billy liked Mr Wragg. He was a joker and a bit of a card. When children were in his shop, he would skilfully throw his voice so that fish suddenly spoke to them. Younger children either howled pitifully and clung to their mothers, or happily conversed with cod and haddock without batting an eyelid. Kippers had Scottish accents, cod sounded German, and skate were cockneys. Hearing from a sad eyed conga eel that you shouldn't fiddle with the parsley leaves edging the icy display, was a bit of a shock at any age, and brought squeals of laughter from young and old alike.

  At last, the fishmonger finished his call. He scribbled on an invoice with a pencil from behind his ear and eased himself out of the phone box. He ruffled Billy's hair as he passed him. 'Ayup, Billy. Tell thee mam I've got crabs.'

  Billy nodded and forced a smile. He hesitated at the telephone box door for a moment to make sure the fishmonger was not going to hang around, and then slipped inside. He began leafing through the telephone book and took a moment to rehearse his Irish accent one last time.

  He dialled the number.

  'Hello Police, Hammerton Road.'

  Billy gagged with horror, dumbstruck by the sound of Sergeant Burke's voice on the telephone. His was the last voice he had expected. It threw him into panic.

  'Hello who's there? Come on, speak up, don't be shy.'

  'Stan Sutcliffe's dead,' he croaked. 'He's under the Ebenezer.'

  'Who's that? I know you don't I? I recognise that voice. What do you say about Sutcliffe?'

  Slamming the phone down Billy ran outside. It had all gone terribly wrong. He had panicked and forgotten to disguise his voice. Sergeant Burke now knew it was him. Sooner or later he'd have to explain how he knew where Stan was. Everything had gone wrong. His mother would cry and his father would give him that awful, sneering look of disappointment and never speak to him again. He might even be sent to jail for the rest of his life.

  ………

  CHAPTER NINE

  The damage was extensive. It ran from the glossy flare of the black Rover Six's front nearside wing and all along its running board. Deeply gouged grooves, stained with the green paint of the coach-house door marked the polished coachwork. Billy stopped his bike at the gate and watched bewildered as the old doctor, furiously denied the evidence of his own eyes and his car's screaming protests - he just kept on driving forward, stripping even more paint off the car and the coach house door.

  Greenhow eventually stopped over-revving the engine and erupted from the car in a burst of fury, arms waving, curses flying. Stepping back, he slammed the car door, and shaking with anger gaped at the damage. He raged at the vehicle, kicking its coachwork and wheels. Purple faced and spluttering, he cast round for something to hurl at it. When he saw Billy, he froze. 'What do you want?' he screamed. 'Get off my drive. Get away from here.'

  Billy pedalled away as fast as he could. It was well known the Doctor had a temper, but Billy was astonished to see him behave so irrationally. Pedalling blindly in his haste to get away he steered himself into a quiet street that ran at the back of a row of large Victorian villas. It was unfamiliar territory, so he slowed down to look around and get his breath back. It was a forgotten backwater, which he supposed had been a service lane for the grand houses, such as the doctor's, fronting the main tree-lined street.

  Suddenly his bike stalled. It hung motionless, locked by brute force. The brute was old man Sutcliffe, poor Stan's father. He seemed to have leapt out of nowhere and grabbed the bike's handlebars, his hard hands covering Billy's, crushing them against the metal. He had a grip like steel. 'Who was it?' the old man demanded.

  His meaning was obvious. 'I never saw anything,' Billy wailed, trying to wrench free.

  'You liar!' Sutcliffe spat, swinging his fist into Billy's temple. The bike lurched as he released his grip on it, tipping Billy onto mossy cobbles. Sutcliffe pushed the bike down hard on top of him, and leaned his weight on it, trapping him beneath it. One of the pedals ground into Billy's shin, the saddle pressed against his throat, choking him.

  'They're saying you was in there. Don't deny it. Somebody saw you climbing over a backyard wall next to the chapel. Everybody knows you were there. You saw my Stan get shot. Who did it?'

  Blood oozed from Billy's shin as the bicycle pedal ground into him. He could not move. Sutcliffe had him helpless, clamped to the ground like a mouse in a spring trap. He twisted and fought, gazing around for help and inspiration; there had to be some way out. The lane was deserted, its Victorian back gardens screened by mature trees and shrubs. It was more like a cobbled pavement winding through a forest, than a suburban street. A few minutes earlier he had been rattling a dolphin shaped knocker on the door of the little hexagonal gatehouse that Doctor Hadfield rented from the owners of
one of the great villas. He'd not found him at home. Now he desperately wished the young doctor would appear in his ancient Austin Ruby saloon and deliver him from Sutcliffe's madness.

  'Who shot my boy?'

  'I wish I knew. I just heard voices.'

  'So you were in there? I knew it. Who did it?'

  'All I know is - it was a man, but I don't know who. If I knew I'd tell you. Crikey, I'd tell the police, I promise you. Stan didn't deserve killing.'

  'No he didn't,' sobbed Sutcliffe, great tears welling in his wild eyes and running down his stubbly face. 'He wasn't never going to kill nobody. He might scuff people up a bit, but he was never no killer. He was a good boy my Stan.'

  Recalling Stan's last words to him, something about roasting him alive, Billy decided only a lunatic would debate the point with a lunatic's father.

  'He had fifty quid on him.'

  'I didn't take it,' cried Billy.

  'I know, the coppers showed me it. They found it on him.'

  Some point was being made that Billy was missing, and he frowned stupidly at Sutcliffe. The old man failed to offer further explanation. He released Billy and pulled a piece of crumpled newspaper from a trouser pocket. He smoothed it out on his stomach and read from it, "containing ten five pound notes." He gazed around despairingly, shaking his head.

  Was it the money, or the fact that he had it? Billy wondered, scrambling out from under his bike.

  'He never had no fifty quid in all his life,' Sutcliffe said sadly. 'Then when he's dead, he makes the big time. They found it in his pocket, all fresh new fivers, like they was straight from a bank. How'd he get 'em? I know everything he was doing. We was partners – family. He never had no fifty quid as I never knew about. So where did it come from - eh? Then somebody kills him.'

  'Honest Mr Sutcliffe, I didn't see anybody.'

  Suddenly the old man glanced around suspiciously, his body tense and crouching. 'Did you hear sommat? Somebody's coming.' He whacked Billy across the face and started backing away. 'I'll get you some other time, Perks. You better have some answers for me next time.' Then he was gone - vanished into the tangled greenery as suddenly as he'd appeared, and Billy was alone again.