Not Safe After Dark (42 page)

I started at Frinton’s, on the High Street, where I also treated myself to two rashers of bacon and an egg. By mid-morning, I had made my way around most of the neighbouring cafes, and it
was lunchtime when I arrived at Lyon’s in the city centre. I didn’t eat out very often, and twice a day was almost unheard of. Even so, I decided to spend one and threepence on roast
beef and Yorkshire pudding. There was a lot of meat around then because the powers that be were slaughtering most of the farm animals to turn the land over to crops. I almost felt that I was doing
my national duty by helping eat some before it went rotten.

As I waited, I noticed Finnegan slip in through the door in his usual manner, licking his lips, head half-bowed, eyes flicking nervously around the room trying to seek out anyone who might be
after him, or to whom he might have owed money. I wasn’t in uniform, and I was pretending to be absorbed in my newspaper, so his eyes slid over me. When he decided it was safe, he sat down
three tables away from me.

My meal came, and I tucked in with great enthusiasm, managing to keep Finnegan in my peripheral vision. Shortly, another man came in – dark-haired, red-faced – and sat with Finnegan.
The two of them put their heads together, all the time Finnegan’s eyes flicking here and there, looking for danger signs. I pretended to pay no attention but was annoyed that I couldn’t
overhear a word. Something exchanged hands under the table, and the other man left: Finnegan fencing his stolen goods again.

I waited, lingering over my tea and rice pudding, and when Finnegan left, I followed him. I hadn’t wanted to confront him in the restaurant and cause a scene, so I waited until we came
near a ginnel not far from my own street, then I speeded up, grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him into it.

Finnegan was not very strong – in fact, he was a scrawny, sickly sort of fellow, which is why he wasn’t fit for service – but he was slippery as an eel, and it took all my
energy to hang on to him until I got him where I wanted him, with his back to the wall and my fists gripping his lapels. I slammed him against the wall a couple of times to take any remaining wind
out of his sails, then when he went limp, I was ready to start.

‘Bloody hell, Constable Bascombe!’ he said when he’d got his breath back. ‘I didn’t recognize you at first. You didn’t have to do that, you know. If
there’s owt you want to know why don’t you just ask me? Let’s be civilians about it.’

‘The word is
civilized
. With you? Come off it, Fingers.’

‘My name’s Michael.’

‘Listen, Michael, I want some answers and I want them now.’

‘Answers to what?’

‘During last night’s air raid I saw you coming out of a house on Cardigan Road.’

‘I never.’

‘Don’t lie to me. I know it was you.’

‘So what? I might’ve been at my cousin’s. He lives on Cardigan Road.’

‘You were carrying something.’

‘He gave me a couple of kippers.’

‘You’re lying to me, Fingers, but we’ll let that pass for the moment. I’m interested in the raid before that one.’

‘When was that, then?’

‘Last Wednesday.’

‘How d’you expect me to remember what I was doing that long ago?’

‘Because murder can be quite a memorable experience, Fingers.’

He turned pale and slithered in my grip. My palms were sweaty. ‘Murder? Me? You’ve got to be joking! I’ve never killed nobody.’

I didn’t bother pointing out that that meant he must have killed
somebody
– linguistic niceties such as that being as pointless with someone of Finnegan’s intelligence
as speaking loudly to a foreigner and hoping to be understood – so I pressed on. ‘Did you break into Rose Faversham’s house on Aston Place last Wednesday during the
raid?’

‘Rose Faversham. Who the bloody hell’s she when she’s at home? Never heard of her.’

‘You might have known her as Mad Maggie.’

‘
Mad Maggie
. Now why would a bloke like me want to break into
her
house? That’s assuming he did things like that in the first place, hypnotically, like.’

Hypnotically?
Did he mean
hypothetically
? I didn’t even ask. ‘To rob her, perhaps?’

‘Nah. You reckon a woman who went around looking like she did would have anything worth stealing? Hypnotically, again, of course.’

‘Of course, Fingers. This entire conversation is
hypnotic
. I understand that.’

‘Mad Maggie hardly draws attention to herself as a person worth robbing. Not unless you’re into antiques.’

‘And you’re not?’

‘Wouldn’t know a Chippendale from a Gainsborough.’

‘Know anybody who is?’

‘Nah.’

‘What about the thousands of pounds they say she had hidden in her mattress?’

‘And pigs can fly, Constable Bascombe.’

‘What about silverware?’

‘There’s a bob or two in a nice canteen of cutlery. Hypnotically, of course.’

The one thing that might have been of value to someone other than herself was Rose’s silverware, and that had been left alone. Even if Fingers had been surprised by her and killed her, he
would hardly have left his sole prize behind when he ran off. On the other hand, with a murder charge hanging over it, the silverware might have turned out to be more of a liability than an asset.
I looked at his face, into his eyes, trying to decide whether he was telling the truth. You couldn’t tell anything from Fin-negan’s face, though; it was like a ferret mask.

‘Look,’ he said, licking his lips, ‘I might be able to help you.’

‘Help me?’

‘Yeah. But . . . you know . . . not standing here, like this . . .’

I realized I was still holding him by the lapels, and I had hoisted him so high he had to stand on his tiptoes. I relaxed my grip. ‘What do you have in mind?’

‘We could go to the Prince Albert, have a nice quiet drink. They’ll still be open.’

I thought for a moment. The hard way hadn’t got me very far. Maybe a little diplomacy was in order. Though it galled me to be going for a drink with a thieving illiterate like Fingers
Finnegan, there were larger things at stake. I swallowed my pride and said, ‘Why not?’

•

Nobody paid us a second glance, which was all right by me. I bought us both a pint, and we took a quiet table by the empty fireplace. Fingers brought a packet of Woodbines out
of his pocket and lit up. His smoke burned my lungs and caused me a minor coughing fit, but he didn’t seem concerned by it.

‘What makes you think you can help me?’ I asked him when I’d recovered.

‘I’ll bet you’re after Mad Maggie’s murderer, aren’t you?’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Word gets around. The
real
police think it was gypsies, you know. They’ve got one of them in the cells right now. Found some silver candlesticks in his possession.’

‘How did they know whether Rose had any silver candlesticks?’

He curled his lip and looked at me as if I were stupid. ‘They don’t, but they don’t know that she didn’t, do they? All they need’s a confession, and he’s a
brute in the interrogation room is that short-arse bastard.’

‘Who?’

‘Longbottom. It’s what we call him. Longbottom. Short-arse. Get it?’

‘I’m falling off my chair with laughter. Have you got anything interesting to tell me or haven’t you?’

‘I might have seen someone, mightn’t I?’

‘Seen someone? Who? Where?’

He rattled his empty glass on the table. ‘That’d be telling, wouldn’t it?’

I sighed, pushed back the disgust I felt rising like vomit in my craw and bought him another pint. He was smirking all over his ferret face when I got back.

‘Ta very much, Constable Bascombe. You’re a true gentleman, you are.’

The bugger was
enjoying
this. ‘Fingers,’ I said, ‘you don’t know how much your praise means to me. Now, to get back to what you were saying.’

‘It’s Michael. I told you. And none of your Micks or Mikes. My name’s Michael.’

‘Right, Michael. You know, I’m a patient man, but I’m beginning to feel just a wee bit let down here. I’m thinking that perhaps it might not be a bad idea for me to take
you to Detective Sergeant Longbottom and see if he can’t persuade you to tell him what you know.’

Fingers jerked upright. ‘Hang on a minute. There’s no need for anything drastic like that. I’m just having my little bit of fun, that’s all. You wouldn’t deny a
fellow his little bit of fun, would you?’

‘Heaven forbid,’ I muttered. ‘So now you’ve had your fun, Fin— er . . . Michael, perhaps we can get back to business?’

‘Right . . . well . . . theatrically speaking, of course, I might have been in Aston Place on the night you’re talking about.’

Theatrically
? Let it go, Frank. ‘Last Wednesday, during the air raid?’

‘Right. Well I might have been, just, you know, being a concerned citizen and all, going round checking up all the women and kids was in the shelters, like.’

‘And the old people. Don’t forget the old people.’

‘Especially the old people. Anyway, like I said, I just
might
have been passing down Aston Place during the air raid, seeing that everyone was all right, like, and I
might
just have seen someone coming out of Mad Maggie’s house.’

‘Did you?’

‘Well, it was dark, and that bloody smoke from the power station doesn’t make things any better. Like a real pea-souper, that is. Anyway, I might just have seen this figure, like, a
quick glimpse.’

‘I understand. Any idea who it was?’

‘Not at first I hadn’t, but now I’ve an idea. I just hadn’t seen him for a long time.’

‘Where were you?’

‘Coming out of— Can’t have been more than two or three houses away. When I saw him he gave me a real fright, so I pressed myself back in the doorway, like, so he couldn’t
see me.’

‘But you got a look at him?’

‘Not a good one. First thing I noticed, though, is he was wearing a uniform.’

‘What kind of uniform?’

‘I don’t know, do I? Soldier’s, I suppose.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Well, he moved off sort of sideways, like.’

‘Crabwise?’

‘Come again?’

‘Like a crab?’

‘If you say so, Constable Bascombe.’

Something about all this was beginning to make sense, but I wasn’t sure I liked the sense it made. ‘Did you notice anything else?’

‘I saw him go into a house across the street.’

‘Which one?’ I asked, half of me not wanting to know the answer.

‘The milkman’s,’ he said.

•

I didn’t want to, but I had to see this through.
Tommy Markham
. My own godson. All afternoon I thought about it, and I could see no way out of confronting Harry and
Tommy. No matter how much thinking I did, I couldn’t come up with an explanation, and if Tommy
had
murdered Rose Faversham, I wanted to know why. He had certainly been acting oddly
since he came back from the army hospital, but I had acted rather strangely myself after they released me from the hospital in Manchester in 1918. I knew better than to judge a man by the way he
reacts to war.

I consoled myself with the fact that Tommy might not have killed Rose, that she was already dead when he went to see her, but I knew in my heart that didn’t make sense. Nobody just dropped
in on Mad Maggie to see how she was doing, and the idea of two people going to see her in one night was absurd. No, I knew that the person Fingers had seen coming out of Rose’s house had to
be her killer, and he swore that person was Tommy Markham.

Fingers could have been lying, but that didn’t make sense, either. For a start, he wasn’t that clever. He must also know that I would confront Tommy and that, one way or another,
I’d find out the truth. No, if Fingers had killed Mad Maggie and wanted to escape blame, all he had to do was deny that he had been anywhere near her house and let the gypsy take the
fall.

I steeled myself with a quick brandy, then I went around to Harry’s house just after eight o’clock. They were all listening to a variety programme on the Home Service, and someone
was torturing ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’. As usual, Tommy was wearing his army uniform, even though he was on extended leave. He still looked ill, pale and thin. His
mother, Polly, a stout, silent woman I had known ever since she was a little girl, offered to make tea and disappeared into the kitchen.

‘What brings you out at this time of night, then?’ Harry asked. ‘Want some company down at the Prince Albert?’

I shook my head. ‘Actually, it’s your Tommy I came to see.’

A shadow of fear crossed Harry’s face. ‘Tommy? Well, you’d better ask him yourself, then. Best of luck.’

Tommy hadn’t moved yet, but when I addressed him, he slowly turned to face me. There was a look of great disappointment in his eyes, as if he knew he had had something valuable in his
grasp only to have it taken from him at the last minute. Harry turned off the radio.

‘Tommy,’ I said, speaking as gently as I could, ‘did you go to visit Mad Maggie last Wednesday night, the night of the air raid?’

Harry was staring at me, disbelief written all over his face. ‘For God’s sake, Frank!’ he began, but I waved him down.

‘Did you, Tommy? Did you visit Mad Maggie?’

Slowly, Tommy nodded.

‘You don’t have to say any more,’ Harry said, getting to his feet. He turned to me as if I were his betrayer. ‘I’ve considered you a good friend for many years,
Frank, but you’re pushing me too far.’

Polly came back with the teapot and took in the scene at a glance. ‘What’s up? What’s going on?’

‘Sit down, Polly,’ I said. ‘I’m asking your Tommy a few questions, that’s all.’

Polly sat. Harry remained standing, fists clenched at his sides, then Tommy’s voice broke the deadlock. ‘It’s all right, Mum,’ he said to Polly. ‘I want to tell
him. I want to get it off my chest.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, son,’ she said.

Tommy pointed at Harry. ‘He does. He’s not as daft as he looks.’

I looked at Harry, who sat down again and shook his head.

Tommy turned back to me. ‘Did I go visit Mad Maggie? Yes I did. Did I kill her? Yes, I d id. I got in through the back window. It wasn’t locked. I picked up the posser and went
through into the living room. She was sitting in the dark. Didn’t even have a wireless. She must have heard me, but she didn’t move. She looked at me just once before I hit her, and I
could swear she knew why I was doing it. She understood and she knew it was right. It was
just
.’