Gently through the Mill (13 page)

‘And as you were coming away?’

‘I’m sorry … all I was thinking about …’

One thing only was clear as daylight. Blacker had been in the yard and witnessed the rendezvous. In the morning he tackled Fuller in his office. He made no bones about what he was after.

‘He’d seen us together – must have done some
eavesdropping. Anyway, he’d known beforehand and decided to watch. I wanted to knock him down, but God! what could I do? To give me time to think I made him foreman as he asked me.’

‘He threatened to tell your wife?’

‘Her, and Blythely.’

‘Coming from a source like that …’

‘It was true, and I couldn’t have faced it out.’

‘Again, you could have come to us.’

The miller made a despairing gesture.

‘Anyway, I didn’t have the time … and when I realized my position …!’

Gently nodded without pressing the point. There were limits in the pursuit of wisdom. He poured out the last of the coffee into their respective cups and tossed his off in several large mouthfuls.

‘And now you know that Blythely knows?’

‘It’s – it’s an impossible situation!’

‘You can’t just cut and run. You’ll have to go and have it out with him.’

‘But if you only knew the man! It’s impossible to talk to him. He’ll probably pretend he doesn’t know what I mean, but all the time he’ll use it as a lever … he just builds things up. I know how it will be.’

‘Nevertheless, you’ve got to be neighbours.’ Gently reached for his raincoat and began to put it on. ‘And I’ll let you into a secret. I’ve been giving him a lot of thought. He’s the loneliest man in Lynton … just put that up your sleeve! If he doesn’t want to forgive it’s because he’s desperate for a tie with someone.’

And he shoved out into the rain before the miller could ask him questions.

Outside he came to a halt, realizing that he wanted to use a phone. There was one in the office, of course, but after having made such a satisfactory exit … instead, he plodded across the road to the call box beside the café.

‘Chief Inspector Gently – anything for me yet?’

He had lost count of the times he had put the same question since breakfast that morning.

‘Yes, sir. We’ve found out the place.’

‘What?’

‘The place where Roscoe and Ames were staying. It was a pub at Strangemere, about eighteen miles away. But I’m afraid the chummy got out ahead of us, sir.’

Gently sighed softly and eased his shoulders into a good functional position with the glass panels of the call box. On the whole, he hadn’t been expecting too much!

‘Give me the details.’

They were few and unsensational. At Strangemere, apparently, a bird sanctuary attracted visitors, and occasional enthusiasts were found staying in the village. Roscoe had had the wit to take advantage of this circumstance. He had represented himself and Ames as London bird-lovers on vacation. Dressed in tweeds and equipped with binoculars, they had occasioned no attention; it was late in the day before the local bobby realized that he too had been fraternizing with a pair of rare birds …

‘Arrived there on Friday, did they?’

‘Yes, sir, driven in by a hire car.’

‘Did they have any visitors?’

‘No, sir, not as far as we know. But Roscoe had a letter yesterday with a Lynton postmark.’

‘What happened last night?’

‘Ames went off on the bus, sir. Roscoe said he might be late back and stayed up waiting for him. In the morning Roscoe packed his bags and went off in a hire car from the village. He left a message behind as though Ames would be coming back during the day, then later on the publican got a telegram asking him to forward Ames’s luggage to an address in Stepney.’

Gently clicked his tongue. ‘That was all very
elaborate
! And I suppose you discovered where the hire car took him?’

‘To Ely station, sir.’

‘Yes … that was inevitable. And then after that?’

‘I’m sorry, sir, but Ely can’t trace him.’

Gently sighed again. This was where he’d come in – with the solitary difference that now it was one man going the rounds! He riffled the edges of the phone book with a fretful finger. One left out of the three who knew all the answers …

‘Listen – I want a search warrant for these two addresses. I’ll be in to collect it as soon as it’s signed.’

Outside a green Bentley had just stormed past into town – Pershore going to blow up the super, without doubt. Between the doors of the engine-room one could barely make out a face. As it felt Gently’s eye on it, it shrank into the shadows.

T
HROUGH THE RAIN
and early darkness the shop windows sparkled with a particular invitation and cheerfulness, though, when you looked through them, you discovered that the shops were nearly deserted. Some, in fact, had already begun to put up their shutters. It was only the larger shops and chain-store branches which were persisting in wearing out a fruitless day.

Blacker, seated beside Gently, had become silent and brooding. His earlier protests and asseverations had died away in occasional mutterings.

Of course Fuller had been lying! Wasn’t Gently up to that? Those fivers had come via his wage packet and a bonus on his promotion …

‘It’s only his word against mine – don’t know why you’re making all the fuss! And he’s got plenty to hide. If some of us saw fit to open our mouths …’

But Gently wasn’t buying anything. He’d spoken only ten words to Blacker. Shepherding him through the rain to the Wolseley he’d said:

‘You’re coming with me. I’m going to search your house.’

After which he couldn’t be teased into adding another syllable. So Blacker had stopped wasting his sweetness on the desert air.

The market square was a faintly gleaming vacuum, its shadows dappled by parsimonious street lighting. The green Bentley parked challengingly outside headquarters confirmed an earlier guess of Gently’s.

‘Superintendent Press engaged?’

The desk sergeant made a face and raised his eyes to the ceiling. Blessedly muted, one could hear the voice of the mayor-elect laying down the law on the floor above.

‘I’ll take my warrants … put me through to the St George.’

Dutt, looking drier, joined him at the car.
Surprisingly
enough, the rain was beginning to slacken. As they drove round the square it eased to an intensity which was almost commonplace.

‘I give the desk a ring, sir.’

Dutt always liked to keep up with the latest developments.

‘Other things being equal, sir, it looks like these geezers was on a burgling stunt. That Steinie bloke must have learned how to tickle peters.’

‘Hmp!’ Gently didn’t sound very enthusiastic. ‘And then he goes and banks his first split of stolen notes …’

‘It could have been legit, sir. They might have cleaned up some mugs at Newmarket. Then they gets
to hear of this Lynton nob with a safe-full of ackers – he was there at the time, sir. He might have shot his mouth to someone about what he was going to do.’

‘Which transformed Taylor into a peterman?’

‘Unless they figured how to get the key, sir.’

‘And then they quarrelled amongst themselves?’

‘I can’t think of nothink else, sir.’

Gently drove on silently for some moments. In the back of the car, Blacker was listening avidly to their conversation. Gently could see him in the mirror leaning forward to catch every word.

‘Let’s hope Griffin is being his conscientious self … I shall be interested to hear details of his findings at Prideaux.’

Spooner Street, where Blacker lived, was part of the dismal nineteenth-century development of the north of the town. Cramped terraces of slate-roofed brick extended identically on either side. A handful of street lights, sparkling through the rain, seemed overawed by the implicit gloom of the thoroughfare.

‘This is his, sir. Number one-one-four.’

It was no different from the others, about twelve feet of frontage. Beside it a party-passage led into the backyards. Many years ago all Spooner Street had been decorated in reddish-brown.

‘Here’s the warrant – take a look at it!’

Blacker scowled at it summarily.

‘I can tell you right now you won’t find nothing …’

‘Just open the door, if you don’t mind.’

Reluctantly the foreman brought a key out of his
pocket. As they entered the small front room they were met by the close, seedy smell of dry rot. Lit by a single clear-glass bulb of low wattage, the box-like
compartment
had an air of neglect and despair.

‘Start in here, Dutt.’

‘Yessir.’

‘I’ll take a look at the back.’

Blacker threw himself into a shoddy fireside chair, something like a grin twisting his weak mouth. Gently shoved open a door which led past stairs into the back parlour. From there one entered a scullery with access to the yard.

Switching on a torch, he played it round the shining walls and concrete outside the back door. As Dutt had informed him, there was no back way out of No. 114 – though, to be strict, if somebody had had the patience to scale a couple of dozen party-walls …

The floor of the yard was completely concreted and contained nothing but the dustbin and an old
dog-kennel
. From over the wall came the smell of kippers being grilled and the voice of a woman scolding children. The earth closet yielded nothing, neither did the coalshed, from the walls of which bunches of onions were hung.

‘There’s a loose board in here, sir!’

He went back into the front room. Dutt, that paragon of painstaking, had already rolled back the threadbare carpet. One of the planks underneath it was innocent of fastenings; it creaked invitingly when you put a foot on it.

‘Go on – have it up!’

Blacker had lit a cigarette. His greyish eyes were watching them with contemptuous malice.

‘If you ask me it was the gas people what had that board up, but nobody around here is going to ask me!’

They had it out. He was right. There was nothing under it except dirt and a gas pipe with a repair done to it. The foreman blew triumphant lungfuls of smoke towards the ceiling.

‘Coming in here … doing what they like – never as much as “by your leave”! That’s a fine way to treat an honest man, I must say! And isn’t it us what pays their screw for them?’

‘Get out of that chair.’

‘What – are you going to have that to bits?’

Poker-faced, Gently removed the seat and prodded the upholstery. He was drawing a blank, he knew. Blacker’s attitude was eloquent of what they were going to find there. Growing more insolent every moment, he followed them about with jeering remarks. He even went as far as to point out another loose board to Dutt.

‘Now – do I get an apology?’

In a different way there was something almost like Pershore about him.

‘You’ve pulled all my things around and you was wrong, wasn’t you? So I reckon I ought to get an apology, don’t you?’

Gently studied him mildly for perhaps ten seconds.
Involuntarily the foreman’s eyes sank before this harmless-seeming scrutiny.

‘Come on, Mr Blacker – we’d better be going.’

‘Eh?’ Blacker reared up. ‘Where are we going to?’

‘Where did you expect?’ Gently shrugged
indifferently
. ‘To the next obvious place. And your lady-friend may be out unless we get round there sharpish.’

With infinite slowness the rain was fretting itself to a standstill, becoming first a drizzle and then a fine mist. An uncanny silence seemed to follow in its wake, a silence belonging to the streets and buildings. It was as though they were emerging from a prudent retirement into which, animal-like, they had been driven by the hours of downpour. Now they were stirring and reaffirming their identities.

‘She’s nothing to do with me – how many more times—!’

Couldn’t Gently afford that ironic little smile? Dutt was in the back keeping the panicky foreman company; his hand rested on the man’s arm by way of an official reminder for him to watch his manners. And Blacker, he was sitting on needles; there wasn’t any insolence about him now.

‘I just go out with her sometimes – nothing wrong with that, is there? How should I know what she gets up to!’

People were beginning to come out in raincoats and plastic macs. A gang of youths were risking their fancy jackets and wrinkled trousers.

‘She’s a bad lot for all I know, but what’s that got to do with me?’

In the cinemas they would be sitting in close-packed rows, adding the warm smell of damp clothes to the stale atmosphere of cigarette smoke.

‘Anyway, I’m not to blame!’

They were turning down by Hotblack Buildings.

‘What she does is her business – you can’t pinch me for it!’

The Wolseley purred to a halt opposite the last wretched house.

Gently knocked his double knock and after an interval the door opened to reveal Maisie Bushell’s aggressive features. She was wearing a purple dress with a short hemline and plunging neck, and her face was made up heavily with an abundance of eyeshadow.

‘You! I can’t see you now – I’m just off out!’

‘I regret, Miss Bushell—’

‘Take your big foot out of my door!’

‘Please examine this warrant … we are here to search your house.’

‘You get out of here, or I’ll scream my bleeding head off!’

She didn’t scream, she knew better, but nothing could quieten her virulent tongue. Gently, who had a wide experience of Metropolitan prostitutes, was surprised at the freshness and vigour of this sample of local talent …

‘And you – bringing these so-and-so’s into my house – me, what’s never had no bloody trouble, except once when I asked a plain-clothes slop for a light!’

In spite of his anxiety Blacker was forced to wince under the flail.

‘You’re no stinking man – you’re a so-and-so, do you hear me? I’ve had better men than you coming after me on their knees!’

‘I didn’t bring them here—’

‘Like hell, you rotten juicer!’

‘You listen, Maisie! I tell you—’

‘Shut your filthy gob before I mess in it!’

Gently glanced around the miserable room with its apology for furnishings. He hadn’t particularly noticed it before, but apart from one chair all the moveables were grouped on the same side. By the chair in question the furious owner had taken her stand.

‘Would you mind stepping aside, Miss Bushell?’

‘Yes, I bleeding would – so what are you going to do about it?’

‘I shall have to remove you forcibly, ma’am.’

‘Just you randy slops lay one finger on me—!’

It was Dutt who had to do it, at some personal risk and expenditure of energy. The voiced opinions of Miss Bushell would have coloured an air more susceptible. Raging and fighting, she was deposited on her settee; Dutt was obliged to stand by her while Gently prosecuted his search.

‘You rotten buggers … leave that chair alone!’

The chair removed, it was possible to roll back the dingy floorcloth from the better part of the floor.

‘If you touch my carpet I’ll have your bloody eyes out!’

Nevertheless, the floorcloth was duly removed from the naked boards.

There was no need to go all the way. The half-plank, freshly sawn across, stood out like a bent penny. It was in almost the same situation as the loose board in Blacker’s front room: the one had probably suggested the other.

‘You touch it and I’ll kill you!’

Unheeding, Gently prised up the plank and reached for the brown-paper packet which lay snugly
underneath
. He placed it on the chair and pulled the bow-knot which secured it; spilling out untidily came a number of made-up packages of what were indubitably five-pound notes …

‘That’s the so-and-so you want to talk to – me, I never knew nothing about it!’

Blacker’s thin lips were bitten tight together, and at a glance from him towards the door, Dutt had moved across to plant his burly form in front of it. Gently was still counting the packages of fivers. There were nineteen of them, and one broken open.

‘Asked me to keep it for him – do you think I bothered to look inside? As if a mess like him ever had any money!’

In each full packet there were a hundred notes, in the broken one only forty. Plain rubber bands had been substituted for the printed wrappers of the bank.

‘Asked you to keep it – when was that?’

‘Last Thursday night – and well you know it!’

‘About what time?’

‘Half past stinking midnight!’

‘And you didn’t enquire what the parcel contained, though keeping it involved sawing a plank out of your floor?’

She was a fighter to the last, the Mussolini-chinned Miss Bushell. Sitting bolt upright on the settee, she had the appearance of a boxer, game if outclassed; at the sound of the bell she would come out mixing it.

‘Would you like to describe what took place?’

‘Nothing took place – I told you everything last time!’

‘You told me that you made a round of the pubs and that Blacker kept you company. Are you telling me now that he found this parcel on a seat?’

Miss Bushell swore lustily and with a degree of talent.

‘So he left me after the pubs turned out – what’s the messing difference? He’d got some business to see to, that’s what he told me, and if he tries to tell you different then he’s a rotten liar!’

‘He told you the nature of the business?’

‘No, he something didn’t!’

‘But he left you at about half past ten?’

‘More like eleven, since it’s a slop who wants to know.’

‘What happened then?’

‘What happened? I went home! Do you think I hang about the streets after I’m fixed up for the night?’

‘And Blacker arrived here at half past twelve?’

‘That’s what I said, ain’t it? Him and that messing parcel! “I got something here worth a bit, Maisie,” he says. “You’d better hide it away for me, just in case they
come looking for it.” And me being weak and good-hearted—’

‘Were you in the habit of hiding things for people?’

‘Me? Why, I never done a wrong thing in my life!’

‘But you made no objection – even though “they” might come looking for it?’

‘I’d been on the juice, I tell you – I never give it a thought!’

‘But the next day, when you were sober. Wouldn’t you have thought about it then?’

‘So help me God, I’d forgotten all about it. I mind my own business, not half a dozen other people’s.’

‘Yet you lied to me yesterday.’

‘Because him there told me to!’

‘And you didn’t know what the parcel contained?’

‘No more than a dead nit!’

‘Isn’t that your handbag lying on the mantelpiece?’