Gently Go Man (4 page)

‘Not just Betty.’

‘Betty and the rest. It’s all one in my mind,’ she said. ‘If she’d been a decent sort of girl she wouldn’t have led him on so far.’

‘Just briefly,’ Gently said, ‘did anything happen during the evening?’

‘I played bridge,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘The Dawsons came over. I played bridge.’

In the report it said she’d been rung at a quarter to one on the Wednesday morning. Later that day she’d seen the body and identified the motorcycle and some clothes. Her doctor, Setters had said, had given her a strong sedative, but after the initial shock she had declined to use it.

A car pulled in to the driveway.

‘That’s Mother with the kiddies,’ Mrs Lister said.

‘One more question,’ Gently said, ‘then we’ll stop being a nuisance to you. What sort of cigarettes did your son smoke?’

Mrs Lister looked puzzled. ‘Guards, I think.’

‘Did he ever talk of sticks?’ Gently asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘What are sticks?’

‘Reefers,’ Gently said.

Still Mrs Lister looked puzzled.

‘Cigarettes,’ he explained, ‘with a percentage of marijuana added.’

‘Oh,’ she said. She flushed slightly. ‘That’s dope, isn’t it?’ she said.

Gently nodded. ‘That’s dope.’

‘No,’ she said quickly, ‘he wouldn’t. No.’

‘He never mentioned them at all?’

‘Never,’ she said. ‘Not Johnny.’

‘You didn’t suspect he might be smoking them? They have a strong, heady aroma.’

She hesitated. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Johnny just wouldn’t have done it.’

Gently rose. ‘Would it very much upset you if we looked through his room?’ he said.

Her flush was heightened. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘You can do that if you want to.’

She rose and led the way out into the hall and down a short passage. They passed a door behind which could be heard the voices of children in expostulation. She checked there but then continued. She opened a door at the end of the passage. It gave into a small bedroom with an enormous window that faced the trees.

‘Johnny’s room,’ she said, catching her breath. She went to the window and stood looking out.

Gently entered. He sniffed delicately. Stale cigarette smoke and newish furnishings. A bedroom suite in unpolished oak, a bedside cabinet, a table. On the table was a record player and a plastic rack stuffed with records. In the top of the cabinet there were books. There was a yellow Penguin on the Buddhist Scriptures. A glass ashtray stood on the cabinet, recently emptied but not washed. A working jacket hung over a chair. Some boots were shoved underneath.

Gently opened the door of the cabinet. It contained magazines, a camera, junk. The dressing-table drawers were crammed with clothes and in the tallboy was clean bedlinen. Setters went over the wardrobe. He had exploring fingers like a pickpocket’s. Soon he closed the door noiselessly and gave a small, negative shrug. Shoes,
boots were all empty. Nothing was hidden about the bed.

‘About how long was Johnny in here at lunchtime on Tuesday?’ Gently asked.

‘Only a moment,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘He went straight in and came straight out again.’

Gently went to the doorway, stood looking round the room. He walked across to the record player, snapped the catches, lifted the lid. A record lay on the turntable. He lifted the record. Underneath, wrapped in a serviette, were five unbranded cigarettes. They were clumsily rolled in a greyish paper and made from a coarse brown tobacco. He showed them to Setters.

‘Like the others you’ve seen round here?’ he asked.

Setters nodded. He turned one of them over with his nail.

Mrs Lister came forward, stared at the five cigarettes. She was very pale.

‘And they’re reefers?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ Gently said. ‘They’re reefers.’

‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘Oh God, not Johnny. It’s beyond me, I can’t believe it. There’s no meaning any longer.’ She began to laugh hysterically, the tears plunging down her cheeks.

‘I’m sorry,’ Gently said.

‘There’s no meaning,’ she repeated.

‘We’ll have to take these,’ Gently said. ‘We’ll perhaps find out who’s been pushing them.’

‘There’s no meaning,’ she went on. ‘And I’m so tired of it, so tired of it. There’s no point in it all. And I’m so tired, so tired.’

Some feet scuffled in the passage. A little boy stood in the doorway. He was six or seven, fair-haired, wearing a school blazer with a huge badge. His eyes were round. His mouth was working. His chubby hands were balled hard. He suddenly ran screaming to Mrs Lister.

‘Mummy. Mummy. Mummy. Mummy.’

He buried his face in her stomach. She held him to her with both hands.

‘Peter,’ she said. ‘Peter.’

‘Mummy, mummy,’ he wailed.

‘Peter.’

He twisted round. He stared at Gently. There was a flinching pucker in his face.

‘Go away policeman,’ he said. ‘Go away from my mummy.’

‘No, Peter,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘He’s a kind man, Peter.’

‘Go away,’ Peter said. ‘Policeman go away.’

Gently made a sign to Setters.

They took the reefers and went.

‘Progress,’ Setters said as they drove away from Chase Drive. ‘And me the dumbest screw in the force not to have looked for those sticks sooner. Do you think she really didn’t know?’

‘She didn’t know,’ Gently said. ‘She had suspicions, maybe, but she didn’t want to believe them.’

‘So he was smoking,’ Setters said. ‘That alters the picture just a bit. They were both of them smoking. Might have been high when they crashed.’

‘Yet he leaves the sticks at home,’ Gently said. ‘Why was that?’

‘Just his home supply,’ Setters said. ‘You can maybe buy them in Castlebridge.’

‘Did you find any at the crash?’ Gently asked.

‘No,’ Setters said. ‘But that proves nothing.’

‘You’d have thought they’d have had a spare one about them,’ Gently said.

Setters rubbed his cheek. ‘The girl didn’t have any at home,’ he said. ‘When the medic told us we sent round, but we found nothing there. And it’s right, she ought to have had some. She had a case in her bag. It just wouldn’t be that chummie Elton whipped those reefers, you think?’

‘You’ve met him,’ Gently said.

‘Yeah,’ Setters said slowly. ‘Pass back. He isn’t the type. He’s next to human. He wouldn’t have gone through her bag.’

‘I’ll want to talk to her,’ Gently said. ‘Is there a chance of me doing it?’

‘I’ll ring the blood-house,’ Setters said. ‘But she hasn’t been conscious again since.’

They parked at H.Q. and went through to Setters’ office. He rang the hospital. Betty Turner was still in a coma. Gently had spread out the reefers and the serviette on a sheet of paper on Setter’s desk. He sat looking at them while Setters phoned, pushing them about with the tip of a pen-holder.

Setters hung up.

‘You’ll have heard,’ he said.

Gently shrugged, put down the pen-holder.

‘What do we know about them?’ Setters asked.

‘They’re a common make,’ Gently said. ‘We’ve picked up scores of this type in Soho and points west.
They’ve been a headache for some time. You’d better dust them and send them to Narcotics.’

Setters nodded. ‘And the serviette?’

‘Dust that too,’ Gently said. ‘Then put a man on tracing its origin. He can start on the cafés in the Ford Road area.’

‘Yes,’ Setters said. ‘That’s probably where Lister got those sticks on the Tuesday morning. He wasn’t late home so it’d be in the tea-break, and he wouldn’t go far from the site for that.’

‘One other thing,’ Gently said. ‘Suppose you wanted to pull a jeebie. Where’s the most likely place to lay hands on one?’

Setters thought about it. ‘Try the First and Last café,’ he said. ‘You’ll find it just out of town on the Norwich Road.’

‘Is it cool, man?’ Gently asked.

‘Bloody arctic,’ said Setters.

‘Like I may make the scene after a meal,’ Gently said.

A
T THE SUN
Gently ordered a high tea and while he ate it read the evening paper. Two reporters had been waiting at H.Q. when he first arrived there and after the conference he had given them a short non-committal statement. He had been photographed. The photograph appeared on the front page. It showed him stooping to enter the Rover, on the whole a flattering shot. It was recognizable also. His waitress had recognized it. She now addressed him as Mr Gently and had a conversation about him with another waitress. The manager, who’d known about him all along, nodded to him with superior deference.

Setters looked in again after tea with the results of the print-taking, but the prints on the reefers had been few and partial and those on the serviette were Lister’s. He’d sent out Ralphs with the serviette and expected a report from him during the evening. Ralphs had been on the case from the beginning: he was keen not to be dropped now.

‘Will you want me with you this evening?’ Setters had asked.

Gently had grinned. ‘Am I likely to need you?’

‘Not in this town you shouldn’t,’ Setters had replied. ‘But you might not be popular where you are going.’

He’d borrowed the paper and gone out looking at it. But only his arm had shown in the picture.

At half-past seven Gently left, after studying a plan of Latchford which hung in the hotel hall. He drove up the High Street, turned right at the top, drove some distance through a residential street. The street ended abruptly. There was open country beyond it. The lights were cut off quite sharply and beyond them was blackness. A little further right was a pull-up backed by a low, dim-lit building, and on the building was a red neon sign which read: First And Last. He drove in and parked between a truck and a small van. Next to the van, parked in a square, were six or seven motorcycles. When he got out from the car he could hear canned jazz music, somebody beating out the rhythm, a girl’s voice raised in a squeal. He went over and through the door. Opposite the door was an espresso bar. The building was L-shaped, furnished with tables and chairs, underlit and
overheated
. He crossed to the bar.

‘I’ll have a cup of coffee,’ he said.

The man at the bar looked like an Italian, he had thin features and a twitch. At a table near the bar a truck-driver was eating. The rest of the tables near the bar were empty. It was round the corner where the noise was coming from. There one could partly see the illuminated bulk of a jukebox.

‘I fix you some eats?’ the Italian said.

‘No,’ Gently said. He paid for his coffee.

‘Some sandwiches, fruit?’ the Italian said.

Gently shrugged, walked away, the Italian watching him.

Round the corner they’d pushed the tables back and were sitting in a group. There were ten youths and six girls and, in the centre, an older man. Most of the youths wore black riding leathers, black sweaters, black boots. The others wore short, patterned jackets, black sweaters, black jeans. The girls wore various sweaters, black jeans, black ballerinas. They all wore ban-the-bomb badges. They sat on chairs and on the floor.

Gently walked up to the group. He stood drinking his coffee. They didn’t stop beating out rhythm but all their eyes were fixed on him. One of the girls was Maureen Elton. She squealed something to her neighbour. The jukebox was turned up very loud, it was thumping out New Orleans Blues. The Italian came round the end of the bar, kept making gestures with his head to someone. The eyes that watched Gently didn’t have expression, they were just watchful, continuedly.

The jazz stopped, leaving a humming. The Italian went very still. From down by the counter came the clatter of the truck-driver’s cutlery. Three of the youths got to their feet, one of them strutted towards Gently. He had a handsome, fresh-complexioned face but with a wide mouth and a receding brow. He stood before Gently, hands on hips. Gently finished his coffee, put down the cup.

‘Like what gives?’ the youth said.

Gently didn’t say anything.

‘Like I’m asking you, square,’ the youth said.

Gently felt in his pocket for his pipe.

‘You want I clue you?’ the youth said. ‘Like you’re dumb or some jazz? We don’t go for squares in this scene. Like you’re smart you’ll blow pronto.’

Gently began filling his pipe.

‘Like you’re smart,’ the youth said.

Gently went on filling his pipe. ‘Sidney,’ he said, ‘you’d better sit down.’

The youth got up on his toes. ‘What’s that tag again?’ he said.

‘Sidney Bixley,’ Gently said.

‘Say it again,’ said the youth.

‘Sidney Bixley,’ Gently said. ‘Six months in Brixton for armed assault.’

He finished filling his pipe and lit it.

‘So just sit down, Sidney,’ he said.

There was a squawk from Maureen Elton. ‘He’s that screw I was shooting about. The one they’ve got down from the Smoke. Like he knows about you, Sidney.’

‘I don’t know that,’ Sidney said. He’d fetched his hands off his hips. ‘I don’t know nothing about screws. Like cocky squares I know about.’

‘He’ll hang you up,’ Maureen said.

‘Cocky squares,’ Sidney said.

‘Like you’d better not flip your lid,’ Maureen said.

‘I murder squares,’ Sidney said.

‘Sid,’ said the older man, ‘keep it cool, man. Do as he says.’

‘Like making in here,’ Sidney said.

‘No, keep it cool,’ said the older man.

Gently puffed. He came forward. He pushed Sidney
to one side. Sidney staggered, went falling, got tangled up with a chair. He jumped up and stood swearing. His two followers did nothing. Gently spun a chair back to front. He sat down, looked round him.

‘Dicky Deeming?’ he said.

The older man gave him a nod. ‘You’re well clued-in, man,’ he said. ‘Don’t seem to need introductions.’

‘I didn’t know Lister,’ Gently said.

Deeming smiled faintly, said nothing.

‘You were all friends of his?’ Gently said.

‘Yes,’ Deeming said. ‘We were his friends.’

‘But somebody wasn’t,’ Gently said.

‘So you tell us,’ Deeming said.

‘He was killed,’ Gently said.

‘Like that’s certain, man,’ Deeming said.

He was around thirty, tall, with a large,
gaunt-cheeked
face, light hair cut close, slate eyes, big ears. He wore a white-trimmed black windcheater, black jeans, sandals. He had a hard, large-framed body. It showed well in the windcheater.

‘So what’s your theory?’ Gently said.

‘Like why should I have one?’ Deeming asked.

‘You’ve talked to Maureen, she says, you know what we think about Johnny. He made it, that’s all, he was out there with them. That’s crazy, it sends us. Johnny comes very big with us.’

‘Yuh, big, he’s big with us,’ several of them growled.

‘He was the mostest, coolest,’ said a girl with dark hair.

‘And as for this jazz about his being busted,’ Deeming said, ‘like we’ve seen enough of screws to know the action they make.’

‘You think we’re lying to you?’ Gently asked.

‘Throwing a curve,’ Deeming said. ‘That’s not lying, it’s trying it on, hoping it’s going to fit some place. You don’t like hipsters in Squaresville. You like to put the heat on them. So you make a deal out of Johnny and come pushing us around with it.’

‘And like we don’t stand for it,’ Bixley said, stepping up closer.

‘Cool it, Sid,’ Deeming said. ‘Pitching screws is for squares.’

‘He bugs me, this guy does,’ said Bixley. ‘Me, I could spread him on the wall.’

‘Dicky says cool it,’ Maureen said. ‘So cool it quick, you big ape.’

Gently puffed a few times. ‘You know we’ve spoken to Betty Turner?’ he said.

‘The screws,’ Deeming said, ‘don’t keep us posted with the news.’

‘She confirms that someone rode them off the road that night.’

‘Like you could imagine things,’ Deeming said. ‘With leading questions when you’re muzzy.’

‘All right,’ Gently said. ‘So the police are lying their heads off. Lister crashed himself for the kick, and didn’t give a damn about his fiancée. And Elton ran away from nothing, because there was nothing to run away from. And there’s nobody here who smokes reefers or knows where reefers can be obtained.’

Nobody said anything for a couple of moments. They were all scowling, but they didn’t say anything. Bixley was grinning a stupid grin and showing his teeth at
Gently. The Italian had faded behind his counter but he still had his ear cocked. Deeming alone wasn’t scowling. He’d got the least bit of a smile.

‘It’s a kick, smoking,’ he said. ‘It’s a kick, and it touches. Jeebies go for the touches, they don’t give a damn for Squaresville. Like I’ve smoked myself, man, when I was up in the Smoke, and you won’t never stop it. If you could’ve done you would’ve.’

‘Lister,’ Gently said, ‘had five sticks in his possession.’

Maureen’s hand flew to her mouth. Her eyes went to Bixley.

‘Like you’ve answered it, screw,’ Bixley said, still grinning with his teeth. ‘Like he’d been smoking that night. Wouldn’t make him ride good.’

‘You were at that jazz session,’ Gently said.

‘So what does that make?’ Bixley said.

‘You were where you could see if he was smoking. And what he was smoking,’ Gently said.

‘Yuh,’ Bixley said, ‘sure. Like I went there just to watch him. Got my chick along, too, but I was watching Johnny Lister.’

‘Which is Anne Wicks?’ Gently asked.

‘That’s my tag,’ said the dark girl. ‘And it’s right what Sid says, we didn’t have no time for Johnny.’

‘There’s sticks about,’ said Deeming quietly. ‘But like where they come from is nobody’s guess. They get passed along from hand to hand, that’s how sticks get into the scene.’

‘Yuh, that’s how,’ Bixley said.

‘Like you touch your pals for them,’ said Deeming.

Gently looked Bixley over. Bixley showed some
more of his teeth. The record said he’d been a gang-member two years ago, in Bethnal. There was nothing against him here, Setters had said, skipping a couple of traffic offences. At times he worked as a casual labourer at one or another of the construction sites.

‘You digging me good, screw?’ said Bixley.

Gently gave him his slow nod.

‘We’d have done you up in Bethnal,’ said Bixley. ‘That’s telling you, screw. We’d have done you up.’

Gently puffed. ‘Someone did Lister up.’

It’s a bleeding lie,’ Bixley said.

‘You passed the crash. Yet you didn’t see it.’

‘So like what if I didn’t?’ Bixley said.

‘Elton saw it, and he stopped. But you didn’t,’ Gently said.

‘Just needle me some more,’ Bixley said. ‘Just one more jab from you, screw.’

‘Sid,’ said Deeming, ‘take some ice.’

‘Like who is telling me?’ Bixley asked.

‘Take some ice, Sid,’ Deeming said. ‘And stop behaving like a cornball.’

‘This screw is pushing me,’ Bixley said.

‘Screws,’ Deeming said, ‘are always pushing. But cool it, man, and cool it good. Don’t get hung up over a square.’

‘I don’t go for pushing,’ Bixley said.

‘You listen to Dicky,’ Deeming said.

He got up. He stretched himself. He looked a giant beside Bixley. He patted Bixley on the shoulder, gave him a lazy sort of smile.

‘Go and drop a nickel,’ he said, ‘let’s make with the music again.’

‘Crazy,’ Maureen Elton said. ‘You drop the nickel in, Sid.’

‘I don’t get pushed,’ Bixley said.

‘We all get pushed,’ Deeming said. ‘But you do the cool thing, Sid. Like keep it down and make with the music.’

He started Bixley towards the jukebox. Bixley hung on for a moment, then he went. When he’d set the jukebox thumping he stood beside it looking sulky. Deeming turned back to Gently.

‘Like we could talk it up,’ he said. ‘Over in my pad if that suits you. We could talk it up there.’

‘We could talk what up?’ Gently asked.

Deeming grinned. ‘The scene,’ he said. ‘What a screw should know about it. The real jazz. The cool thing.’

‘I might not get that,’ Gently said.

‘Sure, you’ll get it,’ Deeming said. ‘Then you’ll be all clued-in. Like you’re missing something now.’

He signalled the Italian to come over.

‘Pack us a feed-bag, Tony,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a screw coming to supper, so make it crazy, make it wild.’

Eastgate Street was the old town where it merged into the new, a crooked backstreet slanting into one of the overspill highways. It didn’t show many lights, a lot of the buildings were warehouses, but at the further end were new buildings, office blocks, a filling station. Deeming had rooms over one of the warehouses. They were behind the filling station and looked over it to an overspill neighbourhood. The approach from the street
was down a side lane fenced from the filling station with square-mesh netting, then through a door and down an unlit passage to some bare stairs and a landing. Off the landing were two doors, one of them lettered ‘W.C.’, the other opening into two rooms which were the extent of the accommodation. Deeming had struck matches on the way up but inside the second door there was a light switch.

‘What they’d call in the Village a cold-water walk-up pad,’ he said. ‘Like it’s
de rigueur
with the beatniks, but jeebies aren’t so hung up.’

‘You’ve lived in America, then?’ Gently asked.

‘I had two years there,’ Deeming said. ‘Me, I’m a nowhere sort of cat, but I came from Sidney in the first place. But like I couldn’t groove in that scene and I kept on kicking along eastwards. I went up the islands and across to ’Frisco, then coast-to-coast, then away here. Like I was searching for something, screw, and maybe I’ve found it, maybe I haven’t.’

He plugged in an electric stove, waved his hand to a chair. Then he fetched a plate from a cupboard and unpacked Tony’s sandwiches on to it. The room was large with a high ceiling and had probably been an office once. The walls were painted a yellowing cream and the woodwork brown, which was beginning to blister. The wood floor was naked, was kept swept but not washed. The furniture comprised six bedroom chairs, two tables, two cupboards, a dresser and a bench. At one end was a sink and an old gas-cooker. The windows didn’t have curtains. There was an obsolete typewriter on one of the tables, stacks of paper, typed MS. On the other table was
a record player, a record case, a guitar. On the floor and everywhere there were books in piles. Most of the books were new, had review slips sticking out of them.