A Clubbable Woman (24 page)

I’m your friendly village-bobby-type, he thought, not your hard-as-nails CID boy. This is going to take hours.

‘Mrs Williams? Mrs Ivy Williams?’ he said to the large heavily-made-up woman who answered his ring.

‘No, that’s my mam. What are you after, then?’

‘I’m from the police. We’re checking on the movements of people in this area last night, Mrs …?’

‘My name’s Girton. Is it about that lad then what’s missing? Well, mam can’t help you. Never gets out at night, do you, mam?’

An elderly woman had appeared out of the kitchen which Edwards could see through the half-opened door at the end of the small hallway.

‘What’s that? What’s up?’

‘It’s a policeman, mam. You weren’t out last night, were you, mam?’

‘No, I wasn’t. Where’d I go?’

‘That’s right,’ said Mrs Girton to Edwards. ‘Where’d she go?’

‘Well, thank you. You weren’t here yourself last night, were you?’

‘No, not me. Mondays and Thursdays are my regular nights. Sorry. ‘Will you have a cup of tea, eh?’ Mrs Williams was already turning into the kitchen. Her daughter caught the look on Edwards’s face and grinned sympathetically.

‘Don’t be daft, mam. He’s got a lot of work to do, haven’t you? Got to visit everyone in the road?’

‘That’s right. Thanks all the same. Good night.’

He turned to go.

‘Everyone in the road, eh?’ shrilled the old woman. ‘Well, make sure you talk to Mrs Grogan next door, then. She knows something, eh? She’ll be able to tell you something if you’re from the police.’

She disappeared back into the kitchen.

Edwards raised his eyebrows quizzically at Mrs Girton, who shrugged.

‘You never know. She’s getting on now, but she takes good notice of whatever anyone says. I wouldn’t pay too much heed myself, though.’

‘Well, thanks anyway. Good night.’

‘Good night.’

It was raining in earnest. He glanced at his sodden list under the street-lamp. Mrs Kathleen Grogan, No 2.

There was a sharp double blast from a horn. Turning, he saw at the end of the cul-de-sac a police-car. He went towards it.

‘Hello, Brian,’ said the uniformed constable cheerily. ‘Enjoying yourself?’

‘Great. What are you doing here?’

‘They’ve found him. Mickey Annan.’

Edwards nodded and said, more as assertion than question, ‘Dead?’

‘No. Alive and well. We’ve come to tell you to jack it in. Hop in and we’ll give you a lift back.’

Edwards was half into the back seat before he remembered Mrs Grogan.

He hesitated. ‘Come on, then.’

‘Look, John. Could you hang on just a couple of minutes? There’s just one more call I’d like to make.’

‘What’re you on about? Playing detectives? I told you, the house-to-house is off …’

‘Yes but …’

‘Sorry, Brian. I’ve got to get on. There’s at least two other poor sods trudging around in the wet when they could be clocking off and going home. Now hop in and let’s go.’

Edwards got back out of the car.

‘OK, John. You shove off. I’ll make my own way back.’

‘Have it your own way. But you’re a silly bugger. Cheers.’

Yes, I’m a silly bugger. The silly bugger to end all silly buggers.

‘Bugger!’ he said aloud as he watched the car’s taillights disappear into the driving rain. ‘I must be mad.’

He made his way back along the pavement and turned up the narrow path.

Pascoe had sat in silence as his superior swiftly and efficiently did his part in calling off the search for Mickey Annan. This was the first rule when an operation was over. Get your men back. There were too many working hours for too few police as it was without letting any be wasted unnecessarily.

Finally Dalziel was done.

‘What happened?’ Pascoe had asked.

‘He was out looking for Jesus.’

‘What?’

‘It’s these bloody schools. When I was a kid it was two-times table and the sharp edge of a ruler along your arse if you didn’t know them. Now it’s all stimulating the imagination. Christ! Show me a kid who ever needed his imagination stimulated! Anyway, little Mickey Annan was a wise man in the school Nativity play and got very interested in guiding stars in the East, and all. Especially when his teacher explained that Jesus was born again for everyone every Christmas and Bethlehem was never far away. How many bloody miles to Bethlehem! His favourite poem! Anyway, to Mickey the East was where his Uncle Dick and Aunt Mavis live at High Burnton out towards the coast.’

‘How did he get there? He did get there, I take it?’

‘Oh yes. Sat on a bus. Told the women he was sharing a seat with that he’d lost his money. He reckons wise men don’t need to bother much with the truth as far as ordinary mortals are concerned. Anyway his uncle had gone off for Christmas with his family, the house was empty. He got in through a half-closed larder window. Very small evidently. Then he bedded down.’

‘But what’s he been doing today, then?’

Dalziel had looked pityingly at the sergeant.

‘Wise men don’t travel by day,’ he said. ‘You can’t see any stars by day. You’ve got to wait till it’s night.’

‘Oh? I suppose you would, really.’

‘Anyway the woman in the bus saw his picture in this evening’s paper, told the local bobby and gave him the boy’s uncle’s address which the lad had passed on to her the previous evening. He was very chatty, evidently, not a care in the world when she was with him. She never associated him with the missing lad till she saw the picture. Off they went to Uncle Dick’s just in time to meet Belshazzar taking off in search of a clear patch of sky. Kids! I hope his father whacks him till he’s a confirmed atheist.’

Pascoe was still grinning at the story as he rang the doorbell of Arthur Evans’s house. There were lights on all over the house but no one seemed in a hurry to answer the door. He hoped it would be Gwen Evans who came, though his business was with her husband.

Analysing his emotions, he came to the conclusion that Gwen’s affair with Marcus, far from making her more inaccessible, had merely confirmed her accessibility.

He rang the bell once more.

Almost instantly this time the door was flung open. Arthur Evans stood there. He looked distraught, his tie was pulled down and his collar open, his hair was ruffled, but even if he had been neatly dressed and groomed, the bright staring eyes and hectic cheeks would have warned Pascoe that something was amiss. And the smell of whisky.

‘What the hell do you want?’ demanded Evans, then with a sudden change of tone. ‘Is anything wrong? Have you found them?’

‘Found who?’ enquired Pascoe politely.

‘Oh, Christ,’ said Evans, letting his shoulders sag as he turned and walked away from the open door. Pascoe hesitated a moment then followed him, closing the door quietly behind him.

Evans had gone through into the lounge and was standing leaning against the mantelpiece in the classic pose of grief.

But this was no mere pose, Pascoe decided.

‘Mr Evans,’ he said softly, ‘what has happened?’

Evans looked at him wretchedly.

‘What am I to do without her?’ he groaned.

‘Without Mrs Evans, you mean?’ asked Pascoe. ‘Why, where is she, Mr Evans. What’s happened to her?’

He did not go any further into the room but stood in the door keeping a watchful eye on Evans. For all he knew, Gwen was lying upstairs dead and the man in front of him was building up to another outburst.

‘She’s left me,’ said Evans with difficulty, mouthing the words in an exaggerated way as if examining them in disbelief as they came out.

‘Left you? How do you know she’s left you?’ asked

Pascoe, still suspicious that he might be listening to the self-deceiving euphemism of murder.

Evans reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, crumpled as though it had been thrust deeply and desperately out of sight.

Pascoe came carefully forward and took it.

‘Dear Arthur,’ he read, ‘I am leaving you. Our marriage has been at an end for some time as far as I am concerned. I am sorry, but there’s nothing else to be done. Please forgive me. Gwen.’

What the hell do I say? Pascoe asked himself. Oh, Bruiser, I wish you were here.

Evans sobbed drily, gulping in great mouthfuls of air, and rocked back and forward against the mantelpiece which was lined with Christmas cards. One rocked and fell. He looked up then and became aware of the others. Soundlessly, he swept his forearm down the whole length of the mantelpiece, scattering cards and ornaments alike.

Pascoe touched his arm.

‘Come and sit down,’ he said. For a moment it looked as if Evans might resist, then he let himself be led to the sofa where he sat down quietly with his head between his hands and began to cry.

Pascoe left him and ran lightly upstairs. It was his business to make sure that Gwen Evans was not still here. Arthur had obviously had the same idea. Every door was open, even wardrobes and cupboards, and all the lights were on.

He looked into the wardrobes and through the drawers in the dressing-table and tallboy.

She had packed well. Hardly a feminine article remained.

The same in the bathroom. Only, there on its side on top of the medicine chest was an unstoppered bottle. He picked it up. It was empty. He read the label, then turned and ran downstairs three at a time.

Arthur Evans was still on the sofa, only now he was sitting limp with his head resting against the arm. His eyes were closed and his breathing noisy.

Pascoe turned back to the hall, picked up the telephone and dialled.

‘Ambulance,’ he said. ‘Quick.’

‘How was I to know,’ said Pascoe defensively, ‘that there were only two tablets in the bottle? Anyway he must have had about half a bottle of whisky.’

‘You do not pump out a man’s stomach because he’s drunk half a bottle of scotch,’ said Dalziel. ‘If you did, half the top men in this town would be swallowing rubber tubes every weekend. Christ, your common sense should have told you. Evans isn’t your romantic suicide type, he’s your find-‘em-and-mash-‘em type. He’ll have you on his list now.’

‘I hope they’ve gone a long way,’ said Pascoe. ‘They seem to have taken everything. Felstead’s landlady says he told her that he definitely wouldn’t be coming back. They’re almost certainly in his car. Is it worth sending out a call?’

Dalziel shook his head emphatically.

‘Nothing whatsoever to do with us, Sergeant. If a woman runs away from her husband that’s their business. Our only concern is if and when Arthur catches up with them. I can’t see him sitting down for a quiet civilized three-cornered discussion.’

Like you did? wondered Pascoe. Some hope! You and Evans are brothers under the thick skin.

‘What did he say about meeting Mary Connon, that’s the important thing,’ went on Dalziel.

Pascoe tried to stop himself stiffening to a seated attention position and couldn’t quite manage it.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘That is, I didn’t actually ask him. I mean, how could I? The occasion didn’t arise.’

He wished his voice didn’t sound quite so childishly defensive in his own ears, but Dalziel seemed happy enough with his explanation.

‘It’ll keep,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s so important that it won’t keep. Or if it is, and you keep it too long, it stops being important, and that’s much the same thing. Look at the time! There’s nothing more for us here. Come on!’

He stood up and took his coat from the chair over which it had been casually thrown.

‘Well, help me on with it, lad,’ he said to Pascoe. ‘And hurry up. The most dangerous moment of a policeman’s life is the time between getting his coat on and getting out of the station. You never know what’s just coming in through the door.’

Just coming in through the door at that very minute was Detective-Constable Edwards. He was very wet.

‘Where’ve you been, then?’ asked the desk-sergeant aggressively.

‘Out,’ said Edwards with a nerve sharpened by cold and more than an hour in the company of Mrs Kathy Grogan. ‘Is the super still in?’

Entry to the Grogan household had not been easy. Mrs Grogan had wisely taken note of the many warnings issued to householders, especially the elderly living on their own, to examine carefully the credentials of all callers before admitting them.

It took Edwards’s warrant card, two library tickets, a pay-slip and a snapshot of himself and his fiancee on the beach at Scarborough to win him admittance. The snapshot was the clincher. The girl, Mrs Grogan told him, had the look of her late sister.

Once her doubts had been satisfied and the door unchained and unbolted, her attitude was one of reproachful expectancy.

‘So you’ve come at last,’ she said. ‘You take your time don’t you?’

‘Pardon?’ he said.

‘Come along in, then. It’s draughty out here. Gets right under my skirts if you’ll excuse the expression. If I’ve written to the Council once about that front door, I’ve written fifty times. I told her next door you’d be coming, but I didn’t think you’d be so long about it. If this is what you’re like when you are anxious I wouldn’t like to wait for you when you’re not.’

The small living-room she took him into was made even smaller by the amount of stuff she had in there. Every ledge and shelf was crowded with ornaments of one kind or another, most of them bearing some civic inscription ranging geographically from ‘A gift from Peebles’ to ‘A souvenir of Ilfracombe’.

Mrs Grogan, Edwards decided, was strongly attached to the past. He knew very well the dangers of any allusions to any of these articles, but the mere unavoidable act of looking at them was more than enough for his hostess.

He reckoned he had done well to get away with two cups of tea and forty minutes of reminiscence before an opening arose to thrust in a question.

‘Mrs Grogan,’ he said, ‘you said before that you thought we were anxious to see you …”

‘No,’ she said. ‘You said that.’

Did I?’ he asked, half ready to believe anything.

‘Yes. Here. Look, I’ll show you.’

She dived into a pile of newspapers which lay in an untidy stack beneath her chair and after a short search, triumphantly produced a neatly folded paper which she handed to Edwards.