Gently Sahib (12 page)

‘Yet you were mixed up in it.’

‘No!’

‘Tell me where you where on the night of the murder.’

‘I was out of town, at Weston-le-Willows. With Alderman Cockfield and Dave Hastings.’

‘Mixed up in nothing.’

‘Haven’t I said so?’

‘Apart from the giving and getting of alibis.’

‘You’re crazy if you think—’

‘They’re both of them in it, and so are you. Those are the facts.’

‘No – no!’

The glass was slopping over with the vehemence of Ashfield’s denials – yet still he was subduing his voice to little above the level of a whisper. What a woman she must be, the one up the stairs!

A cat-man? Somehow Ashfield wasn’t quite fitting the part . . .

‘Listen – I can’t help what you know about me or anyone else. I had nothing to do with that tiger, nothing to do with Shimpling’s death. If it were poison – look at those bottles! You might have suspected me then. I could have dosed his malted milk or slipped a ringer in his vitamin pills.

‘I could have done – if I’d wanted to! And wouldn’t that have been easier? Would it ever have got to letting loose tigers if I’d been consulted in the matter? It’s common sense. I’d nothing to do with it. All the rest doesn’t matter.

‘I don’t have to admit anything – you can see how it was for yourself.’

‘Yet someone did set the tiger on Shimpling.’

‘Not me! That’s the truth.’

‘But you can guess.’

‘Why should I guess?’

Gently nodded . . . it was a good question!

‘At the best, you’re sticking your neck out for a charge of accessory after the fact. While if you help us . . .’

‘I’ve admitted nothing.’

‘Twenty-five pounds.’

‘How will you prove it?’

They were facing each other now, Ashfield with his head tilted upwards. All the pepper had gone out of his eyes; they were suddenly fixed and frank. Then they jumped, slipped sideways. There was some little commotion in the shop. A voice said:

‘That’s all right, miss – Ken knows me!’

And the door opened. It was Cockfield.

This morning Cockfield was dressed in a bright mixture Irish tweed with a squash hat to match and a canary-coloured waistcoat with medal buttons. He looked surprisingly brisk after his carouse. He had a white carnation in his buttonhole. You’d have taken him for a wealthy farmer who’d brought a herd of bullocks to the stock market. His big face, which the hat suited, shone with cheerfulness and confidence.

‘Ah, Superintendent! They told me I’d find you here. I gave them a ring at the station. ’lo, Ken boy – what do you make of him? He’s a rum nut, isn’t he?’

He laughed loudly, patting Ashfield’s arm. Ashfield responded with smiling grunts. Cockfield swept off his hat and tossed it on the desk, knocking two pill-boxes off the pile of prescriptions. He grabbed them up, still chuckling.

‘Mustn’t muck the goods about! See how neatly he does them up – that’s our Ken for you, Super. Are you busy?’

Gently shrugged.

‘I’m showing you over some sites, remember? Do you more good than grilling Ken. A fat lot he knows, apart from stinks. What are you after here, anyway?’

‘Routine inquiries . . .’

‘That’s a laugh! You’ve been giving him a dose of the old Gestapo, I could twig it when I came in.’ He winked at Ashfield. ‘Don’t let him upset you. He’s a decent so-and-so when you know him. He and I got drunk last night, he’s probably, you know . . . two degrees under.

‘Give him one of your special pick-me-ups, the violet muck. That’ll fix him.’

He laughed again, went prowling round the dispensary as though to give Ashfield time to follow his suggestion. But Ashfield only stood looking awkward and showing his teeth and grunting. Cockfield stared at the bottles. He was putting on a proper act. He stuck his behind out and his head forward, twiddled his thumbs behind his back.

‘What a devil of a lot of junk . . . you’ll never use all this stuff, Ken? Enough to lay out half Abbotsham. I’d hate to get in wrong with you.

‘AM NIT – what’s that?’

‘It’s a poison.’

‘I know, you clot! Why don’t you keep a shelf of Scotch? It’d do more good than all your potions . . .’

A proper act: the business executive being jovial with his pals. Bringing an earthy touch of sanity to a situation which had got tense . . .

‘See here, Super – NUX VOM. There’s a witch’s brew for you. You’d vomit pink elephants as well as nuts if you downed a dose of that. What’s it for, Ken?’

‘Pest control.’

‘Say rat poison, brother! Strychnine, isn’t it?’

‘A form of strychnine.’

‘Strychnine’s good enough. You wouldn’t be fussy if you copped some.’

‘There are various forms—’

‘Listen to him, Super! Now you know his besetting sin. Conscientiousness, that’s it – sometimes he’ll drive you up the wall.

‘He’s a philosopher. Oh, yes! You should hear him lecture on Buddhist philosophy. All about the sound of a glass of water and your face before your parents were born. Drives us mad he does, sometimes, has them arguing till the small hours. And he wouldn’t as much as swat a fly.

‘I mean it, Super – not a single fly!

‘Mr Non-Violence is our Ken. That’s not to say he isn’t human . . .’

Ashfield flushed very slightly, turned quickly towards the bench. He began playing with a chemical balance and making adjustments to the scale.

Cockfield chuckled.

‘But we’re all human, Super . . . when the chips are down, eh? You, me, the lot of us. Squeeze the orange and the pips squeak. I’ve never met a saint – plenty of hypocrites, no saints! Just good triers and bad triers, those are the sizes we come in.

‘Me, I never sack a man if there’s one damned reason why I shouldn’t, and if he’s a trier, he’s my friend.

‘Now what about coming along with me?’

He thrust out a hand, as though expecting Gently to strike it to close the deal. Gently grinned, shrugged feebly. How could one help liking Cockfield?

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’m sold.’

‘That’s talking like a man! You’ve done with Ken?’

‘For the moment.’

‘Come on. My car is outside.’

‘Just one other thing.’

‘What’s that?’

Cockfield hung on apprehensively.

‘That violet muck . . . I think I’ll try it. And for chrissake, don’t slap my back!’

T
HEY WENT OUT
to Cockfield’s car, a maroon Daimler with slate-coloured upholstery, and Cockfield drove smoothly and patiently along Abbeygate and up the Buttermarket. People spilled off the pavements and darted out from behind parked vehicles. At the Market Place a waving constable was trying to keep the traffic moving.

Cockfield’s joviality had waned a little since he’d got into the car, but there was reason enough for that in the difficult
traffic
conditions. Gently felt better. The violet muck – it had tasted like camphorated sulphuric acid – had settled his head, after a preliminary spasm when the top of his skull seemed to have blown off. But now it was apparently back on station, and he had a sensation of floating calm.

They turned down towards the station and then left towards Milehall. Beyond the town the country was park-like and the road fringed with giant trees. Almost, it had a forest atmosphere, with tall plantations in the distance, and the roadside trees, oaks and limes, tangled together high overhead.

‘You’re not taking me far, are you . . . ?’

‘Only to Colton. That’s three miles.’

‘What’s there?’

‘You’ll see, brother.’

Gently grunted and lit his pipe.

Soon there appeared a right turn beside which was erected a large board. It was painted white with a red border and carried the name:
COCKFIELD
, in heavy capitals. They turned off. They were on an unfenced road which unravelled its way through a pocket of heath, closed, at a distance, on each side by low thickets or plantations. Bracken and ferns grew on the heath and occasional thorns and flaking pines. One looked continually for outcrops of rock, but there were only burns of sand or gravel.

‘Rum country, eh . . . ?’

Gently shrugged, puffed.

‘You’ll see a cottage in a minute . . . I was born in that cottage.’

They came to it. It was a ruin. It had been built of clay lump. Plaster, slipping off from one side, showed honey-coloured clay in which straw had been mixed. The thatched roof was sagging in, revealing pale edgings of unweathered straw, and a few rotted timbers appeared carcass-like through the gaps. Cockfield drove by without slowing.

‘Wasn’t any damp-course in those days! Two up, two down, and mother had six children. The old man was a keeper here. He died of rheumatics. We went to school in Abbotsham – three miles. We walked it. All dead except me . . . two died in the war. Tom, he was the last to go. Now I own the whole shoot . . .’

‘You mean the cottage . . . ?’

‘The whole shoot! Eight hundred acres, thereabouts, and two farms, and the hall. Not that the hall’s much to swank about, it was a hospital during the war. The National Trust wouldn’t have it. I let it stand there and rot.’

‘Couldn’t you demolish it for the salvage?’

‘I let it rot – while I build!’

Now they swung through a belt of pines and were met suddenly by an open prospect. Straight ahead, on a gentle rise, stood a large Georgian house of yellow brick. At once, even from a distance, one saw the house was falling into dereliction, for a number of the windows lacked frames and the main entrance gaped doorless.

But to the left, a little below them, was a criss-cross area of dug foundations, and beyond these a score of part-finished houses on which men were busily engaged. Farther back still were finished houses grouped in semicircular closes which, at their centres, had each one or two trees, left for effect when the site was cleared.

Children played under the trees and mothers with prams gossiped there. On the building site cement-mixers churned, a tip-lorry discharged a load of sand.

Only the eyeless house on the rise seemed out of place, seemed mistaken.

Cockfield parked. He glanced at Gently.

‘Well, Super?’

‘Where’s this?’

‘Colton New Village, that’s where. Not a New Town – a New Village.’

‘Your idea?’

‘Who else’s? The County Council wouldn’t touch it – not that I wanted them in, anyway! But I put it to them, at the start.’

Cockfield gestured over the wheel.

‘I’ve built this from scratch in eighteen months. Over a hundred houses, a couple of shops, a village hall and made-up roads. Now we’re finishing ten houses a week and plan to work up to fifteen. The overall scheme is for five hundred houses with shops, pubs, clinic, a library.

‘And when it’s finished I’ll start again across the other side of the estate.

‘There’s my answer to the housing problem – houses, brother: houses – houses!’

‘Since eighteen months ago you’ve built this . . . ?’

Cockfield nodded without looking. His big hands gripped the wheel, he stared ahead, massive, heavy.

‘What would you say – are they good houses? You bet they are, when I build them! I’ve dug foundations and carried a hod, I’ve never skimped a job in my life. Look – look! What would they cost you, twenty miles out of London? Four thousand – five – six – seven?

‘I’m charging eighteen-fifty a house!

‘Eighteen-fifty, with quarter of an acre, gates, fences, laid path – three bedrooms, two reception, kitchen, garage, part-heating.

‘And if you haven’t the brass I’ll rent you one of my houses. Seven – eight guineas a week? Forty bob, brother, and walk in!’

He lifted his hands and slapped the wheel as though pounding at a rostrum. His body was tense behind the action and he made the whole car quiver.

Gently puffed.

‘You’re doing it at a loss . . . ?’

‘No! That’s the cream of the business. I’m making it pay, like a bloody capitalist – enough to put in the public buildings.’

‘But it’s non-profit-making.’

‘Only as far as the money goes. Set that aside and it’s pure profit. I’m building houses and gyping nobody.’

‘Whose money paid for this Daimler?’

Cockfield relaxed, gave a snorting chuckle.

‘I’ve got a great big house, too, brother – and a weekend place – and a yacht! Ted the Red’s a real stinker, eats caviar over his Marx. I’m right and left of the Party line and they hate my guts. I spoil the image.’

‘But you do make money.’

‘Who says I don’t? Sammy Bronstein paid for the car.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘A social criminal – financier, slum-owner, managing director. British Best Buys is his latest floating. They’re putting in supermarkets all over the southeast. I’m building them out this way. I can offer what they want – plant, quality, good labour relations and completion on the dot.

‘And I soak them for it, brother. I’m a capitalist to a capitalist. There’s just this difference – I never skimp. And they know it. And they pay.’

‘So you’re a sort of Robin Hood.’

‘Do you want me to sing the Red Flag?’

‘But you started this village eighteen months ago.’

Cockfield’s hands tightened on the wheel.

He looked at Gently, looked away.

‘I told you,’ he said, ‘I rang the station. I got Perkins. He said you were asking about me, about that accident I had. All right. It was a hell of a thing. You don’t know how you’ll act when it happens. It happened to me. I did the wrong things. I acted like a bastard . . . I was one. It’s been on my conscience ever since and I don’t think I’ll ever stop paying for it. Once it’s done there’s no undoing it. You just have to live with what you are.’

Gently didn’t say anything. Cockfield drew a heavy breath. Now the hands were lying dead towards the bottom of the wheel.

Outside, two youngsters were chasing each other through the bracken at the roadside; they sighted the Daimler and came to a stand, gazing at the car with round eyes.

‘I didn’t know the kid. I knew his father, he’s in the post office. But I knew the kid’s girl friend, Jenny Morris, she’s the daughter of one of my foremen.

‘We have a social club, I sometimes go there . . . you know, I like to be close to the men . . . I knew Jenny. She was a lovely kid. It knocked her flat. She’s gone teaching in Canada.