Gently with the Innocents (17 page)

‘Well . . .’ Gissing took refuge in blankness.

‘Perhaps he hadn’t made his mind up, sir,’ Scoles suggested. ‘He was just raising the cash, ready for a flit. Then maybe he realized we’d hear about the coin, so he decided to keep moving.’

‘He could realize that without going to Norchester.’

‘I don’t know, sir. He isn’t very bright.’

‘Then how did he come to realize it at all?’

Scoles coloured and shut up.

The point was that none of this was fitting Colkett! Gently stared from one to another of the little group. They were seeing it too simply, too narrowly, determined to abide by the main fact . . .

‘Look – let’s face up to what we’re implying! We’re saying that Colkett is a sadist and a killer – that he carried a cosh, and that when old Peachment caught him he beat Peachment up before he killed him. And all we know to date about Colkett is that he’s a rogue with no record of violence – and a local fellow. Not a man, you’d think, who’d run off to hide in London. But that’s what we’re saying, and what we’ll have to make good to the Director of Public Prosecutions.’

Gissing shifted uneasily. ‘But that’s how it is.’

‘You’re happy to go along with that?’

‘Now we’ve found the cosh—’

‘You haven’t tied it to him. He may have picked it up when they found the body.’

Gissing shook his head, looking round at the others. They were staring silently, indignant almost.

‘I don’t know . . . yes, we’ll go along with it. I reckon we’ve got our case now . . .’

Gently shrugged. At least, he’d tried! And all that really mattered was catching Colkett . . . He gave them an account of his visit to Norchester, and the details of the truck-driver he’d got at the Wagon Wheel. Gissing seemed cheered.

‘I’ll get on to Norchester . . . perhaps they can trace him right away. Do you reckon chummie made it to London?’

Gently shrugged again, meaning nothing.

It was the next morning when Norchester CID interviewed a blond truck-driver named Frederick Hall, who had picked up a passenger at the Wagon Wheel on the afternoon of the big snow-up. The description of the passenger fitted Colkett. He’d asked Hall if he were going towards London. Hall told him he was turning off at Beeston Corner, and the man replied that it would do. Hall had set out at half-past four, and reached Beeston Corner about five-fifteen. It was snowing heavily, and Hall offered to take the man on with him to his destination at Elmham Market. The man, however, refused, saying he wanted to be getting on, and the last Hall saw of him was walking down the road in the London direction.

Gissing showed the message to Gently.

‘Not much doubt now where he was heading.’

But a good deal of doubt about whether he’d got there, at such a time, on such a night.

‘Let’s look at a map.’

Gissing produced a one-inch ordnance map from his desk. Beeston Corner was only a mile up the A.140 from Broome.

‘It would do – that’s what he said.’

‘Well . . . it was getting him on towards London.’

Gently tapped the map. ‘At Beeston Corner he was exactly two miles from home! If he were heading there, it would do – but scarcely if he were heading for London. In that case he’d have hung on at the road-house, looking for transport going straight through.’

‘You mean . . . he came this way?’ Gissing stared.

‘Isn’t that what the message is saying? Hall ‘‘last saw him walking down the road’’. You can bet he wasn’t walking to London.’

‘But he didn’t turn up here!’

‘Do we know that?’

‘We—’ Gissing broke off, his look woeful.

‘All we know is he didn’t come home – or if he did, he spotted your watchdog.’

‘But then, where would he have gone?’

‘One place we know of.’

Gissing started. ‘Not the warehouse!’

‘Why not? He had the key, and he needed to get a night’s shelter somewhere.’

Gissing got up agitatedly from his chair and went to stare out of the window. He didn’t want to believe that! It was upsetting all his preconceptions. If Colkett had come lamb-like home it was giving a knock to the image of guilt: Gissing wanted Colkett skulking about the London back-streets – where, in fact, the Metropolitan Police were now watching for him.

‘Did you notice any traces at the warehouse yesterday?’

‘No.’

‘Wait a moment! Give it some thought.’

Gissing came back unhappily from the window and sat down lumpishly in his chair.

‘I wasn’t noticing—’

‘Think – when you got there. Did you see any tracks leading from the warehouse?’

Gissing miserably tried to get a picture in focus, but had to end up shaking his head.

‘I don’t know . . . I was tired. Perhaps one of the others can remember. You see, I was only thinking . . . I believe there was snow drifted against the door.’

‘Let’s go inside.’

Gissing frowned, tried.

‘Was the door of the office open or closed?’

‘Closed . . . locked.’

‘When you unlocked the door, did the office seem warmer than the warehouse outside?’

But he didn’t know, couldn’t be sure. Gissing had gone there for one purpose only. Flogging his tired body, he’d achieved that purpose; the rest was just a great blankness.

‘But if he came back . . . where is he now?’

The sixty-four-dollar question! He might even have resumed his broken journey, and be now indeed roaming London. Yet . . . Colkett?

‘I think he’s here. Probably hiding with some acquaintance.’

Gissing grabbed at it. ‘Yes – that’s possible! We’d better start making inquiries.’

Gently hesitated. ‘Surely – even Colkett! – has got a woman in his background, somewhere?’

‘A woman . . .’

Gissing toyed with the notion as though it were a wonderful, a novel idea.

And perhaps it was. Gently left the Police Station wondering if he hadn’t dropped a penny by accident. Suddenly he was seeing the photographs of those bruises – so many, so widespread, and yet so moderate. The deed of a woman, a woman with a cosh? Old Peachment plainly had not defended himself: he’d stood there taking it, blow after blow, till the last one sent him crashing down the stairs. A woman he knew and hadn’t feared, and yet who’d been armed and had sadistically beaten him. Who’d made that cosh, who knew Colkett . . . who might be hiding Colkett now.

Only one snag – no obvious suspect! They knew of no woman who associated with Colkett; and judging from his knowledge of the man, Gently had to admit the hypothesis improbable. Colkett was a loner, fearful at the bottom of him; he’d shrink from associates of either sex. His commerce with women would be furtive and transient – likely, he’d never slept with one in his life.

Yet was that necessary?

Couldn’t the woman here predicated be dominating Colkett by sheer strength of character?

After all, right under their noses, was
one
woman with whom he was in daily contact . . .

Gently turned aside into Playford Road, where snow lay piled on the pavements in grimy heaps. Hallet’s was open, and in the doorway opposite Metcalfe’s relief stood easing his feet. Gently nodded to him: he saluted. Behind her vegetables, Mrs Hallet watched gnome-like. Gently drifted across to the shop. She rose slowly, keeping her hands in her pockets.

‘Got him yet?’

Gently shook his head. Mrs Hallet stared at him with hard eyes.

‘Taking your time about it, aren’t you? Where do you reckon he’s got to, then?’

Gently shrugged. ‘Perhaps you can tell us.’

‘Me!’ Immediately, the hard eyes sparked with aggression.

‘You know him as well as anyone, don’t you?’

‘Huh!’ She made a gesture with her head.

‘Well . . . doesn’t he meal with you?’

‘Breakfast and tea. Doesn’t mean to say I know his business.’

‘And the evenings, sometimes?’

‘Not Cokey. Always off to the boozer, he is.’

‘But – sometimes?’

She stared at him spitefully. ‘I’m telling you – I don’t know his business! Just the bleeding lodger, that’s what he is, and I don’t have any other truck with him.’

‘He doesn’t bring his friends here?’

‘He ain’t got none.’

‘A woman?’

‘Huh – that’s a laugh! Screwing himself with a dirty book is all he knows about women.’

There was a bitterness in the way she said it, as though Colkett might have been a disappointment. A comic scene of frustrated seduction suddenly suggested itself to Gently.

‘Like that, was he?’

‘Yeah – like that. So you can forget about his women.’

Gently nodded.

Mrs Hallet sniffed. ‘He’d run a bleeding mile,’ she said.

Gently tramped away up Playford Road, kicking at occasional nuggets of snow. Not Mrs Hallet – but still, there might be a woman who fitted somewhere. A woman, probably, of small sex, who’d never made a pass at Colkett – not homosexual, but frigid . . . the presence of sex without its demand.

From Thingoe Road? The finger pointed there, if the woman were known to old Peachment. And to Thingoe Road, not to the warehouse, might Colkett have gone on that snowy night . . .

Pondering, he took his way to Frenze Street, back to the cockpit of the curious business. The front of Harrisons looked dirty and dead against the snow and the dull sky. Yesterday’s tracks were still hard-frozen, showing where Gissing and his men had gone: he’d been right about the snow drift against the warehouse: you could see where the opening door had swept up a pile. Around Harrisons the snow remained unprinted, sealing the old house in its shabbiness. Gently climbed a packing-case to look over the wall. Solid drifts, reaching the lower windows.

He heard a whoop behind him, and climbed down. Dinno and his mates had charged out of the passage. Catching sight of Gently, they galloped swervingly away from him, then pulled up short, looking foolish. Gently walked over to them. This was a larger group than those he’d talked to before. In particular, he noticed a round-cheeked youngster who flushed rosily when he felt Gently’s eye on him.

‘Hullo . . . Phillip Bressingham?’

The boy simply blushed. Dinno, with Moosh backing him, strutted forward to take command.

‘Course he’s Pills, mister . . . you going to pinch him?’

They giggled nervously, eyes rolling at Gently. Phillip Bressingham drooped his head, tried to shrink away among the others.

Dinno’s hands crept compulsively into his pockets. ‘You still looking for old Cokey, mister?’ he said. ‘We haven’t seen him round here no more. Reckon old Cokey’s gone away.’

‘You reckon that, do you?’ Gently said.

‘He’s gone away,’ Dinno repeated firmly. ‘He got the gold, didn’t he, mister? We shan’t see old Cokey no more.’

He stared intently at Gently, challenging him. Moosh, just behind, had a glassy stare. The rest watched breathlessly, eyes helpless, catching at the words in a sort of stupor.

‘I think you’re kidding me,’ Gently smiled. ‘I don’t think there ever was any gold.’

‘Cooh – no gold!’ Dinno exclaimed, almost angrily. ‘We saw it, didn’t we? Didn’t we see it?’

‘Then where’s it gone? Colkett didn’t have it.’

‘But he did, mister! We know he did.’

‘How?’

Dinno’s eyes flickered. ‘Saw him.’

‘Saw him?’

Dinno nodded. ‘Time he came back here.’

There was a strange, tight, electric stillness, everyone there holding his breath. You could almost touch it.

Dinno’s face looked pinched. His eyes were large, straining at Gently’s. Gently’s face had gone blank.

‘When?’ he said. ‘When was this?’

‘Mister, it’s true—’

‘Yes – but when?’

Dinno swallowed. ‘Night before last.’

‘The night before last!’

‘It’s true, mister! We see him here, didn’t we Moosh?’

‘Course we saw him,’ Moosh said. ‘He come out of the warehouse with a big old spanner.’

‘A sort of wrench-thing,’ Dinno said. ‘He come out there an’ locked the door. He was going over to the house to fetch the gold. Then he sees Moosh and me, and chases us.’

‘What time was this?’

‘’Bout half-past seven. Moosh and me had been up the town.’

‘Just you two?’

‘Yes – we’d been up the town!’

‘Tha’s right, mister,’ Moosh said. ‘Up the town.’

Gently hunched his shoulders, staring at them. Was it a fact, or a bit of fantasy? The spanner detail sounded factual, but always that ‘gold’ struck a note of fable . . .

‘Wasn’t it snowing hard the night before last?’

‘We don’t care about snow,’ Dinno said. ‘Anyway, mister, it left off for a bit. That’s why Moosh and me went out.’

‘Where were you when you saw Colkett?’

‘We was just coming through the gateway.’

‘Running?’

‘W . . . yes.’

‘And Colkett didn’t hear you?’

‘W . . . no, he’d just come out. He was closing the door.’

‘How did you know it was him?’

‘You could see it was Cokey. There’s that light in the passage, and he was flashing a torch.’

Gently nodded. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Tell me what happened after that.’

‘W . . . we hid up behind the gatepost, so we could see what old Cokey was up to. Then we see him go across the yard with this great old wrench-thing in his hand, an’ Moosh, he coont keep quiet, he hailer: ‘‘Old Peachey’s ghost’ll come after you.’’ Cooh, did he come for us! We didn’t half run – he’d got that thing in his hand, too.’

‘Did you come back again?’

‘No we never. Reckon old Cokey would have murdered us.’

‘He was suffn wild, he was,’ Moosh said. ‘Didn’t like us watching him go for the gold.’

The ‘gold’ again! And that same odd tenseness – eyes, waiting to see how he’d take it. Did they know the difference between fact and fiction, or did the two merge, become real only in their effect? ‘It’s true, mister!’ And if Gently accepted it, then it was real beyond fact . . .

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Thanks for telling me. I’ll have to think about this.’

‘But we
did
see him, mister.’

‘I’ll believe you.’

They moved off slowly, as though dissatisfied.

Gently turned again to Harrisons, to the smooth witness of deep snow. But the snow, of course, was no longer a witness, if Colkett had been there the night before last. Plenty had fallen after half-past seven to cover the warehouseman’s prints . . . and one remembered that, earlier the same day, he’d made a previous attempt to get in the house.