Keeping Bad Company (5 page)

‘There I agree with you!’ He jabbed a finger at me. ‘He’s also totally unreliable, Fran. When did this – or when was this snatch
supposed
to have taken place?’

‘Quite recently.’

‘When?’
he persisted.

‘Look, I don’t know! We’d have to ask him again!’

So that’s why we ended up spending the afternoon looking for Alkie Albie Smith.

Needless to say, we didn’t find him. We went back to the station and asked the railway staff, the taxi-drivers outside, anyone who looked as if he might have been there earlier in the day. Surprisingly, a few people knew who we meant. Albie, it seemed, was quite a local character. But no one had a clue where he went when he wasn’t hanging around Marylebone . . . or offering to punch passers-by outside Hari’s newsagent’s.

‘That’s it, then,’ said Ganesh, sounding relieved. ‘We tried. He’ll have got hold of some booze and be sleeping it off somewhere. If you see him again, you can ask him again. Otherwise there’s absolutely nothing we can do. I still think he dreamed it all up. You’d bought him coffee. You’d demonstrated you were a soft touch. He wanted a quid off you and was spinning an interesting tale. Look, I’ve got to get back to the shop or Hari will be worrying.’

‘When isn’t he? We should tell the police.’

‘Give over, Fran. They’d chuck you out of the copshop before you finished your story. You didn’t see anything. All you know is, Albie reckoned he saw something – and let’s face it, the old chap isn’t going to impress the police as a reliable witness!’

I wasn’t going to argue with Ganesh. It’s almost impossible at the best of times. Ganesh always makes perfect sense. The more sense he makes, the more I disagree with him. So I let him go. But I wasn’t letting the matter go. I don’t give up that easily. I could at least try to report it. So that’s where I went, the nick.

Contrary to what some people might think of me, I don’t have anything against our gallant constabulary. It does sometimes appear as if they’ve got something against me, but that’s their problem. It was worse when I hadn’t a regular address. But even now I’ve got a proper address, they treat me like I had a record as long as your arm, which I haven’t, I may add. Gan says, what can I expect if I go around with holes in my jeans and a haircut that looks as if someone ran a lawnmower over it. Probably it doesn’t help that my temper has rather a short fuse and the plods can be so frustratingly thick. We get into arguments and the Law doesn’t like that. Generally, I leave them alone and hope they’ll leave me alone.

Walking voluntarily into the local police station that afternoon felt all wrong. I was a fish out of water and probably looked as if I’d come to confess to being the Camden chainsaw killer.

It was a quiet period. A middle-aged desk sergeant was drinking tea from a mug with ‘George’ painted on it. A short distance away, down the counter, an intense woman in a red mac and black beret was making a formal complaint about a neighbour to an impatient woman officer who had probably heard it before.

‘He exposes himself to me!’ said the woman.‘Every evening at the bay window.’

‘We made enquiries,’ said the WPC. ‘No one else has been bothered by him and he denies it.’

‘Every evening!’ persisted the woman. ‘Wearing nothing but one of them baseball caps.’

The desk sergeant, seeing I’d become distracted, put down his mug and enquired, ‘Yes?’

I apologised for my inattention and said I’d come to make a report.

‘Sergeant Henderson,’ he said. ‘You wait over there, take a seat. And you’re late. Should have been here this morning, ten sharp.’

‘Why can’t I report it to you?’ All he was doing was drinking his tea and – I could now see – doing a crossword.

‘If you’re on bail and gotta report in daily,’ he said, ‘you see Sergeant Henderson. He deals with that.’

I explained, very patiently considering the insult, that I hadn’t come to report myself but to
make
a report regarding an incident.

‘An incident?’ he asked suspiciously. ‘Mugging? Traffic offence?’

‘None of those. Much more serious.’ He brightened up so I added quickly, ‘Well, I didn’t actually witness it myself.’

This didn’t go down well. He’d picked up a Biro and now he put it down again and a scowl puckered his receding hairline. The suspicion began to grow in my heart that Ganesh had been right.

I started talking quickly before he could interrupt and managed to get out the gist of Albie’s tale.

The woman with neighbour problem was interested at least. She’d left off telling her own tale and was watching me closely.

The desk sergeant looked as if pension day couldn’t come soon enough as far as he was concerned. ‘Now, let’s get this straight,’ he said. ‘You were told by some old fellow who happened to sit down next to you on a public bench that he’d seen a snatch. Why didn’t he report it himself?’

‘He’s living rough,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t want trouble.’

He rolled his eyes upwards theatrically. ‘Living rough? Oh well, yes, that makes it a whole lot easier! You wouldn’t know his name, I suppose? Because, let’s face it, dear, there’s not a lot we can do with what you’ve just told me now. Half those old dossers are doolally. Live in a world of their own, you know. It comes of drinking anything they can find which is alcohol-based. You wouldn’t credit what they’ll knock back without a blink. Stuff which would poison you and me. They lose all contact with reality. Even if there’s a grain of truth in it, the time scale’s out. They tell you something like it happened yesterday and it turns out it took place forty years ago. If you knew his name, of course, we could check it out – if we could find him.’

In a general sense he was probably right. But I didn’t believe that the drink had scuppered Alkie Albie, despite his nickname. I knew what had done for Albie. He’d dropped out of the regular world the day he’d had to part with Fifi, Mimi and Chou-Chou. The nice kind woman had taken them away to new good homes. But every day of his life since then he’d wondered what had really happened to those poodles (and one of them very likely a canine alcoholic, at that).

‘As a matter of fact I can tell you his name,’ I said proudly, confident of making an impression. ‘It’s Albert Antony Smith.’

It made an impression all right. The sergeant dropped his Biro and gave a yell of laughter. ‘What? Old Alkie Albie? He’s been spinning you one of his tales? Gorblimey, I’ve been listening to all this and it turns out to be one of Alkie Albie’s nightmares?’ He leaned on the counter confidentially. ‘Listen, we know old Albie here. He’s never sober. He’s just what you might call one degree more or less drunk. He never saw nothing, darling, believe me.’

‘He wasn’t on a bender at the time he talked to me,’ I said. ‘He was drinking coffee.’

‘That’d be a bloomin’ first! Old Alkie Albie drinking something which wouldn’t go up in flames if you put a match near it?’

‘I bought the coffee for him,’ I insisted. ‘I know what he was drinking. I believe he saw it all.’

He smiled at me in a kindly fashion as people do at the innocently deluded. ‘Listen, dear. He believes he saw it. You believe he saw it. Perhaps the old git honestly believes he did see it. But then, he sees all sorts, does Albie, when he’s had a skinful. Hallucinating, see? He mightn’t have been puggled when you spoke to him, but believe me, the night he
saw
this incident, he would’ve been plastered. Don’t you worry about it. Nothing happened.’

‘That what they always say!’ said the woman to me, in the tones of one who’d suffered long from the incredulity of the police force. ‘And I saw him as clear as I see you, and him without a stitch on.’

The WPC said firmly, ‘I think you’re mistaken, Mrs Parrish, and this is the third time in a week you’ve been in here. We’re very busy, you know! I’ll have a word with the social worker.’

‘Happens all the time, see?’ the sergeant whispered hoarsely. ‘In here reporting things every other day, she is. Loneliness is what causes it.’

Perhaps that did it, the notion that they classed me with a nutcase who saw naked men at every bay window. Or perhaps I had a sneaking feeling the sergeant might be right about Albie. I felt foolish and sought to rescue a shred of pride.

‘Look,’ I snapped. ‘I only know what he told me and I’m reporting it. Kidnapping’s a serious crime, right? You ought to check it out. At any rate, I’ve been a responsible citizen and told you and I want it logged into the daybook.’

I knew that much about police stations. They keep a record of reported incidents, day by day in the Occurrence Book.

His kindly smile vanished. ‘If you knew the amount of paperwork we have to do, you wouldn’t ask me to waste time writing up a report on one of Alkie Albie’s methsvisions!’

I just stood there. He sighed. ‘All right. Make meself a laughing stock. And your name is?’

I told him and also my address.

‘And at least consider it might have happened!’ I pleaded.

‘Certainly, madam!’ he said. ‘And I’ll ring round the press and tell ’em to hold the front page, and all.’

As I left, the woman was recommencing but about a different man, this time at a bus stop.

I was angry and frustrated – more than a little embarrassed, too – but most of all I was determined. I still believed Albie’s story and I wanted to prove it true more than anything. I’m ashamed to say, the desire to wipe the superior look off the sergeant’s face was a stronger motivation at that moment than rescuing the unfortunate kidnap victim. I’d almost forgotten about her. Not exactly, but she wasn’t in the front of my mind, if you understand me.

But as I walked home, I calmed down more and remembered that behind all this was someone in real trouble and it seemed I was the only person who cared enough to try and do something about it. I might like to be free of commitments, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a conscience. I had to find Albie and get him to tell his story again. He might dredge up some extra detail from his fuddled memory but the longer I let it go, the more likely it was he’d forget altogether.

After that, I had somehow to help the girl. But at the moment I had no idea how to find my witness, much less how I could secure the victim’s freedom. But one problem at a time.

It was late afternoon and the wind had dropped. It was the nicest it had been all day. Perhaps tomorrow would be halfway decent. I’d want good weather if I was to be foot-slogging round the streets. I let myself into my flat. Good detective work starts with a cup of tea.

Chapter Three

Ganesh came by at eight-thirty that evening, rapping on the basement window in the familiar pattern that was his code.

‘Hari was fidgeting about checking the till for ages but that’s it, until tomorrow.’ He slumped on the blue rep sofa, stretching out his legs towards the flickering little TV screen. He looked tired.

Hari opened up the shop early in the morning because of the newspapers but closed at eight sharp, usually on the dot. There’s money to be made by staying open late, but there’s always an increased risk of trouble from kids roaming in gangs looking for mischief and, later, from lager louts spilling out of the pubs. A small shopkeeper is a natural target. Hari played it safe.

Either because of the set’s age or because of the subterranean location, the screen displayed poor picture reception, each frame showing two newscasters, one a ghostly
doppelgänger
hovering at the other’s elbow. Ganesh didn’t seem to mind. Perhaps he was just watching the moving shapes, not taking in any of it.

‘I’ve just about had Hari,’ he said. ‘He’s driving me barmy. He had me counting rolls of Polo mints today. Not that they don’t pinch Polo mints or anything else. Those kids take anything on principle. Just a game to half of ’em. Hauling sacks of spuds around was better.’ That Ganesh had reached this conclusion was a measure of how depressed he was. ‘No one shoplifts a potato.’

I told him I’d been to the police and the tone of my voice must have revealed with what success.

Ganesh muttered, ‘I told you so.’

This didn’t help and put me in aggressive mood. ‘I’m not giving up. I’m going out again tomorrow looking for Albie. He has to be somewhere.’

Ganesh came awake. ‘You can’t wander round doorways, talking to winos and psychos, Fran!’

I pointed out to him that not everyone kipping rough was a maniac. There’d been an occasion, when things had been really bad for me, when I’d slept rough.