Gently Go Man (10 page)

‘But you aren’t going anywhere,’ Gently said.

‘I’ll get a lawyer!’ Bixley shouted.

‘You’ll be good business, too,’ Gently said. ‘Only right at this moment you’re going to listen to me.’

‘I bloody won’t listen!’

‘You’d better,’ Gently said. ‘Otherwise you won’t know what to tell your lawyer.’

Bixley swore.

‘Are we going too fast?’ Gently asked Baynes.

Baynes shook his head. ‘I can do a hundred and sixty, sir,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a special set of lettergrams for use with swear words. Very useful they are in this line of business.’

‘Stop me if you’re getting behind,’ Gently said.

‘Yes, sir. But I’ve had no trouble so far.’

Bixley sat trembling, worrying his thick lip. There was sweat on his cheeks, down each side of his chin.

‘Right,’ Gently said. ‘Are you listening to what I say to you, Bixley?’

‘I ought to have done you,’ Bixley muttered. ‘Christ, if I’d only done you, screw.’

‘You’re in trouble enough,’ Gently said. ‘Another thick lip wouldn’t have helped you. So let’s do some thinking about Leo and Cousin Perce.’

Bixley moaned, said nothing.

‘I think you heard from Perce,’ Gently said. ‘I think
he told you he’d got something for you and that you’d better look him up. So you did, you went to Bethnal, you saw Perce and Leo. You heard that business was flourishing with Leo and that he was planning a little expansion. He was going to put Leach in Castlebridge to run a chocolate depot there – it was a good place for pushing chocolates, a university town. And Leo had remembered his old gang-boy who’d gone to live here in Latchford, and Leo thought that perhaps Latchford could absorb a few chocolates, too. So he proposed that you took care of that district for him, drawing your supplies from Leach on some weekly excursion to Castlebridge. And you liked that proposal, didn’t you, Bixley? It might have been made to measure for you. It meant a return to the easy money you’d been missing – and it flattered you, Leo choosing you for a job like that.’

Bixley croaked: It’s bloody lies, bloody lies, that’s what it is.’

‘Leo and Perce,’ Gently said, ‘haven’t got much left to lie about now.’

‘I only know what you tell me,’ Bixley said. ‘I know screws. Bloody liars. It’s all lies, every bit of it.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ Gently said, ‘back that horse, if I were you. We didn’t guess about Leo and his trade in chocolates. Suppose you start brightening up a little, give us a little cooperation. You’re on your own now, Bixley. All your pals are inside.’

‘They ain’t my pals. I didn’t never know them.’

‘Where did Lister come into it?’ Gently asked.

‘I don’t know about Lister.’

‘Why did he whip that box of chocolates?’

‘I don’t know nothing about that,’ Bixley said. ‘It’s lies, all lies.’

‘We’re out looking for your chocolate-store, Bixley.’

‘Yuh,’ Bixley said. ‘Bloody look for it.’

‘We’ll find it, too,’ Gently said.

‘Yuh,’ Bixley said. ‘I ain’t got one.’

‘Not at Tony’s,’ Gently said.

‘I ain’t got one,’ Bixley repeated.

‘Not at Dicky’s,’ Gently said.

‘You’ve a bleeding hope.’ Bixley said.

‘How will you manage without chocolates?’ Gently said.

‘Crap on your chocolates,’ Bixley said.

‘You’ve smoked your last one,’ Gently said. ‘It’s going to be tough if you’ve been at them heavy.’

‘I don’t smoke sticks,’ Bixley said.

‘Oh, yes,’ Gently said. ‘I think you do.’

‘I ain’t never had nothing to do with them.’

‘We’ll see,’ Gently said. ‘Your pockets will tell us.’

Bixley got unsteadily to his feet. ‘They bloody won’t,’ he said. ‘They won’t, because I ain’t got none. So you can search as much as you like.’

‘You’ll let me search you?’ Gently asked.

‘Yuh,’ Bixley said. ‘You search me.’

‘You can sit down again,’ Gently said. ‘That’s all I want to know for the moment.’

‘I tell you you can search me,’ Bixley said.

Gently ignored him, turned to Baynes.

‘Go and look in the waiting room,’ he told him. ‘Bring back anything interesting you find there.’

Baynes nodded, got up, departed. Bixley came up to the desk, put his hands on it.

‘I’ll get you for this,’ he said. ‘If it’s the last bloody thing. I’ll get you, screw. I don’t care if I swing for it.’

‘You’ve been watching too much TV,’ Gently said.

‘I mean it,’ Bixley said. ‘I’m going to get you. I mean it.’

He kept standing there, leaning, glaring at Gently.

‘I mean it,’ he kept saying. ‘I mean it, I mean it.’

Baynes returned, carrying in his hand a cigarette case which combined a petrol-lighter. His hands were sooty and there was soot on the case.

‘It was stuffed up the chimney of the stove,’ he said. ‘He’d had the soot-door off. It’s a finger-screw job.’

Gently took the lighter. It was flamboyantly
engraved
: S.A.B. He sprang it open. It contained
twenty-three
of the reefers.

‘Somebody else’s?’ He asked Bixley.

‘I mean it,’ said Bixley. ‘I mean it.’

‘And I mean this,’ Gently said. ‘I’m charging you with having possession of prohibited drugs. You don’t need to say anything in answer to the charge.’

‘I ain’t saying anything,’ Bixley said. ‘Not nothing at all.’

Nobody was saying anything. Gently rang the Yard again and got in touch with the Chief Inspector in charge of the Slavinovsky interrogations. There they were having an all-night session, but it hadn’t got them much further. Slavinovsky himself, a Polish Jew, hadn’t breathed a word in five hours. Some of the smaller fry had squeaked and a few more arrests had been made.
Two experts were working on the code in which Slavinovsky kept his records.

‘We’re getting the impression,’ the C.I. told Gently ‘that there were other depots like the one in Castlebridge. But we still haven’t got a clue as to how the stuff was coming in. It’s Cyprus hemp we seized in Bethnal, we’re checking all the known channels. I think Slavinovsky’s building his hopes on us not cracking the code.’

‘Has Percy Waters talked?’ Gently inquired.

‘Not as yet,’ the C.I. replied. ‘Pagram briefed me on your interest and I’m doing my best to get you something. The trouble is, we want everything quickly. You understand that, don’t you? Time’s against us, we have to keep plugging away at the main issues.’

‘I’ve got a murder at this end,’ Gently said.

‘We’re doing our best,’ said the C.I. ‘The moment Bixley’s name comes up I’ll give you a ring at Latchford.’

It was just after ten when Setters got back, dirtier than ever and looking bushed. He dropped on the visitor’s chair in the office, lit a cigarette, and took several deep drags.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just the fun.’

‘How did Deeming take it?’ Gently asked.

‘Dicky,’ said Setters, ‘played records, did some typing, made light conversation. I’ve had a basinful of Dicky. I was bloody polite to him. Bloody.’

‘And Tony?’ Gently asked.

‘He was throwing a fit the whole time. And we had the jeebies on our necks, though they were quiet, for a change.’

Gently nodded, told Setters how his interrogation had gone. Setters sat very quiet when he heard that Bixley had been charged.

‘Yep,’ he said at last. ‘That was good. Me, I’d have searched him and risked the rap. Or maybe I wouldn’t, I’d have fallen down on it. I don’t aspire to such class.’

Gently grinned. ‘I can take it,’ he said.

Setters grinned too. ‘I’m whacked,’ he said. ‘Just reprimand me and let me go home. I need a bath to set me up.’

But he got on the phone and made the arrangements for Bixley’s appearance in court in the morning.

Gently drove him home, to Ashgrove Road, drove to the Sun, parked, smoked a last pipe.

T
HE COURTROOM AT
Latchford was in the medieval guildhall, and courts had been held there since 1452. Like all the oldest buildings in Latchford it was built of dressed flint and Caen stone. The Caen stone had been brought up the River Latch, which flowed into the Ouse, and so into the Wash. The flint was the native stone of the country and had been the wealth of the aboriginal tribes. Thus the pale stone was a modern innovation in the time scheme of Latchford, a mere frame, beginning to crumble, for the panels of indestructible, purplish-dark flint. The flint had never been known to crumble or to make the least acknowledgement of multiplying aeons.

The guildhall stood in the small marketplace and was separated from Police H.Q. by three narrow streets. The marketplace was not now the centre of the town and had ceased to be so for one or two centuries. Its principal use was as a car park. It had only two small shops. In the middle of the morning it was usually deserted, and it was almost deserted when Gently parked there.

He locked his door, strolled over to the guildhall’s spill of worn stone steps. A uniform man stood by the porch. He straightened, touched his helmet to Gently. Inside the building was cold and meagre, its gloom helped out by a few naked bulbs. Some grey cement stairs led up to a landing and to a varnished door labelled Court Room. Beside this stood a second uniform man. He was rocking ponderously on his heels.

‘Your man isn’t here yet, sir,’ he told Gently. ‘They’re doing a bloke up for indecent exposure.’

‘That should be edifying,’ Gently said.

The man began to grin, thought better of it.

Gently went through the door. The courtroom was high-ceilinged and underlit. Its fixtures, sprouting over the whole floor space, were of brown wood and black iron. The dock on the left looked like a cattle-cage and the raked benches like pews. There were bad acoustics. The walls were grimy. The air was chill, damp, neglected.

He noticed Setters sitting on the right, staring boredly at the Counsels’ tables, and near these, at another table, sat two reporters, also bored. In the public gallery sat Mrs Bixley, her eyes fixed mournfully on the Bench. She was one of only two spectators. The other one was Deeming.

Gently went into the gallery, seated himself beside Deeming. Deeming turned to give him a smile, then held up a finger.

‘Listen a moment … this witness.’

He was leaning forward on the varnished partition. The voice of the witness was barely audible across the
sound-deadening room. She was a dowdy, middle-aged woman in a rusty black coat. The tone of her voice was indignant and she held her chin tilted upwards.

‘Magnificent!’ Deeming whispered to Gently. ‘Like she’s the soul and bowels of Christ-ish hypocrisy. Man, the accused was a wild one when he piddled in front of her.’

‘Was she what brought you here?’ Gently asked.

‘Like she’s the bonus,’ Deeming said. ‘I’ve come to find out what you’ve got on Sidney. But keep it down, man, keep it down.’

He lowered his chin on the partition and continued to absorb the witness’s testimony. Beyond him the bulk of Mrs Bixley shifted uneasily on the hard bench. She, too, was dressed in black, and she had artificial violets pinned to her lapel. She didn’t pay any attention to Deeming, the Bench engaged her whole interest.

The case ended with a fine and some stiffish words from the magistrate. After some consultations, enterings, and exitings, a parking offence was heard.

‘These are a drag,’ Deeming said to Gently. ‘Like thy ruin a morning at the court. If it wasn’t for Sid coming on I’d duck out and leave it with them. What’s Sid done – pitched a screw?’

Gently shrugged. ‘You’ll hear,’ he said.

‘I’m anxious about him,’ Deeming said. ‘I come here like a probation officer. Give me the action.’

‘I think you know it,’ Gently said.

‘You mean like my pad being frisked?’ Deeming asked. ‘You were way off the beam there, screw. Nobody stashes their dope with me.’

‘Somebody stashes it somewhere,’ Gently said.

‘Sure,’ Deeming said. ‘That stands to reason. But not in their own backyard they stash it. And not in my backyard, neither.’

‘Where would you stash it?’ Gently asked.

‘Right under your nose,’ Deeming grinned. ‘Some place so obvious the screws wouldn’t see it, like because they’re seeing it every day. What do you say to the bridge near your hotel?’

‘You’d need a boat,’ Gently said.

‘Yes,’ Deeming said. ‘That’s a drawback, but I still think the bridge is good. Then there’s the market cross outside here. You could stash some dope in the roof. Or maybe that sand-hopper outside the screw-shop. You had a look in your sand-hopper lately?’

‘I’ll make a point of it,’ Gently said. ‘Anywhere else you can think of?’

‘Down in the forest,’ Deeming said. ‘Something might stir there.’

He grinned again, ran fingers through his short brown hair.

‘Like stop fishing,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t help you if I could, screw. You make it a crime for these kids to get a touch out of smoking. That’s Squaresville from Squaresville. It’s no crime east of Suez.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Gently said. ‘It’s outside our jurisdiction.’

Wit,’ Deeming said, ‘wit. I like your sense of humour, screw. Big deadpan stuff. I always go for it crazy. But it wasn’t very bright to go hanging Sid up, not because he smokes a little. Sid’s been keeping it pretty cool.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Gently said.

‘Yeah, pretty cool,’ said Deeming. ‘Considering what he used to be and all the action he’s been through. You oughtn’t to jump on a kid like that, you ought to lay on him light. Let him feel he’s being something, don’t sit on his ego. That way he’ll cool some more. But if you push him, he’ll keep flipping his lid. Man, even screws were young once, they ought to remember the way it is.’

‘I can remember,’ Gently said. ‘Though I never stood in one of those.’

‘Yeah, but you could have done,’ Deeming said. ‘That’s the point, you could have done. You’re fighting it out when you’re a kid. You don’t quite see the margins plain. You’ll like as not step over the side and then you’ll wonder why they’re shouting. And all of a sudden you’re getting shot at, you’re a delinquent, you’re branded. Like there isn’t a couple of worlds between a criminal and his neighbour, and when you’re young there’s next to nothing. You could have stood there in that dock.’

‘Say I was lucky.’ Gently said.

Deeming caught him with a smile. ‘Lucky it is,’ he said. ‘You take a point well, screw.’

‘And Bixley’s just misunderstood?’ Gently said.

‘Misunderstood,’ Deeming said. ‘Like you can give that “just” the air, it didn’t sound very bright.’

‘I was working late, this isn’t my morning for being bright,’ Gently said.

‘Wit,’ Deeming said. ‘It sends me. Play Sid for a fine and let him loose.’

Setters came down the aisle for Gently. He didn’t manage to see Deeming sitting there. Deeming grinned, gave a little bow. Setters kept not managing to see him.

‘Bixley next,’ he said to Gently. ‘I’ve had a word with the Bench about it.’

Gently followed him back to the side-stall, took a seat beside Setters and Baynes.

Bixley was called and brought in from some subterranean region. He stalked defiantly into the cage and stood lounging against it. But there was a peakiness about him, he was continually jiffling, moving his hands. He looked sullenly about the court, he saw Deeming. Their eyes met. Mrs Bixley was standing up, but Bixley didn’t look at her.

The preliminaries were gone through and Bixley represented. The Clerk of the Court addressed the magistrate. Gently was called. He gave sparse details of the charge, referring to the episode at Castlebridge; asked the Court for a remand in custody pending further investigation. Bixley’s solicitor rose, made a formal objection. Gently answered it. The remand was granted. It all took exactly five minutes. And during that elapse of time Deeming hadn’t taken his eyes off Bixley.

‘So far, so good,’ Setters said, as they went down the steps from the courtroom. ‘Me, I’m still a bit surprised it’s gone off so quietly. I thought we’d have seen his pals around, but no, only friend Dicky. What was he saying up there that pleased him so much?’

Gently shrugged. ‘He was trying to sell me a line about Bixley.’

‘It’s his aim in life,’ Setters said. ‘He was selling me
some last night. I was praying I’d find that dope there all the time we were searching. I don’t live clean, that’s my trouble. But I’d love to see Dicky in the dock.’

He went with Baynes back to the Wolseley which had brought Bixley to the court. Gently returned to his Rover, prepared to follow the police car. When it came out of the side lane he could see Bixley in the back between Baynes and another detective constable. Gently fitted in behind it. They drove out of the square and into Tungate Street.

And in Tungate Street they saw the motorcycles, six, spread out and charging towards them.

From then on it went too fast to make a coherent picture.

Gently braked, nearly hit the Wolseley, and finished up with one wheel on the kerb. Other motorcycles were coming from behind them, they jam-packed the narrow street. Black-clad figures locked machines together and ran shouting towards the Wolseley. A brick crashed through one of its windows. A door was pulled open, a man dragged out. Setters, a flailing fury, came jack-in-
a-boxing
into the fight. Baynes was struggling in the back with Bixley, he was trying to get some cuffs on to him. Gently launched out of the Rover. He downed a couple of assailants who set on him. As he got to the Wolseley he heard a cry from Baynes and saw Bixley come out holding a bloodied flick-knife. He saw Gently. He came at him. His mouth was dragged down at one corner. His eyes were flinching and small, the brows knotted, twitching. He didn’t say anything. He came at Gently.
He held the blade pointing at Gently’s stomach. He lunged. Gently struck down the blade. Then he nearly decapitated Bixley with the side of his hand.

Bixley folded with a choking shriek and the knife went shimmying along the tarmac. Gently kicked it under the car, began hauling attackers from the man who was down. Baynes staggered out of the car, his arm bloody, stood with his back to the car and kicked. Setters was chopping away near the bonnet. He was shouting something about the radio. The man down got to his feet. There were several attackers on the floor. Suddenly, it seemed, the fighting wavered, the shouting stopped, there was a hush. The black-leathered gang drew off in a group, stood panting together, staring at the policemen. They saw the blood rippling down Baynes’s arm. They saw Bixley writhing and choking. They looked surprised and at a loss, couldn’t determine what to do.

‘Yuh, get Sid,’ one of them said. The voice sounded like Hallman’s. All of them were wearing black stocking-masks with leather helmets and goggles. ‘Yuh, get Sid and let’s get out of here.’ But a curious paralysis seemed to have come over them. They kept panting, standing close, some of them crouching as though expecting an attack. Gently picked up Bixley, slung him into the back of the car. Nobody moved to prevent him. They merely watched with rounded eyes. He went to the nearest pair of motorcycles, ripped the leads from the plugs. Still they watched him, motionless. And they watched Baynes’s arm.

Then Baynes collapsed. He did it so quietly that it looked like a slow-motion film shot. He swayed forward
a little, then his knees went, then he flopped lazily to the street. It acted as a trigger. There was a commotion. They rushed in a panic for the bikes. Setters burst at them with a roar, kicking down bikes and clumping heads. In a moment they were fighting again, but now it was a disorganized, divided fighting, with the attackers on the run and trying to get their bikes started. At the same time reinforcements arrived. A patrol car came squealing in from the square. From the other direction a whistle was sounding, a uniform man pounded earnestly up the street.

‘Stop them – stop them!’ Setters was bawling. ‘Use force – don’t let them go!’

One of them had got a motorcycle going but he swerved round the constable and came off. Others were abandoning their machines, they were trying to dodge away up a side-turn. Four uniform men jumped out of the patrol car, came running in an extended line. One of the fugitives tried to break through it and was felled for his pains. Setters commanded the side-turn, Gently and the other two completed the cordon. They’d trapped eight of them out of twelve, and all the bikes had been left behind. Eight scared, gasping, gang-boys, three of them down on the ground. They huddled together sheep-like. Blood was showing through some of their masks.

‘Right!’ Setters panted. ‘We’ll have them handcuffed in pairs. Simpson, you see to Baynes, the poor swine has been knifed.’

The cordon closed in. It shouldered the fugitives into a tight circle. Hallman ducked and started to bolt for it, but Gently’s hand settled on his collar. He was hoiked
back whimpering, the cold steel snapped on his wrist. The others didn’t give any trouble. One of them could scarcely stand.

In the back of the Wolseley Bixley still lay gagging and groaning.

Beside the Wolseley Simpson was slitting Baynes’s sleeve to reveal an ugly, gashed wound.

Setters hissed. He was trembling.

‘Christ,’ he muttered, ‘that chummie’s lucky. I’d have hit him, I would. I’d have bloody well killed him.’

‘Keep an eye on my car,’ Gently said. ‘There’s a call I want to pay.’

‘I’d have killed him,’ Setters muttered. ‘I’d have beat his brains out on the kerb.’

Gently hurried back up Tungate Street, across the market square to the guildhall. The uniform man on the door was kicking his heels, but he clicked them together when he saw Gently.

‘Has Deeming left?’ Gently demanded.

‘Deeming …? No, sir,’ the man said.

Gently hurried on up.

In the courtroom they were fining a housewife for having a defective rear light on her bicycle. Mrs Bixley had left the public gallery, Deeming was sitting there alone. He turned to give Gently a grin.