Last Detective (19 page)

From his rostrum Boot was thinking how tall teenagers grew in these times. He could see them standing silhouetted like trees against the vermilion walls at the back of the room. Then the tallest and widest tree of all swayed forward, clumsily through the wobbling dancers and Boot saw that it was Dangerous Davies.

Boot found himself shaking within as well as without. He watched Davies come nearer, trying to dance but all out of beat, treading and kicking the young people around him so that they pushed and elbowed him in retaliation. He was shepherding a small, pinched, dark-haired girl. They neared the flashing hues of the rostrum. The illuminated Boot leaned over angrily. ‘What business have you got here?' he demanded.

Davies looked up cheerfully, his grin now, at last, the deepest gash in his face. ‘I'm a golden oldie, love,' he answered. ‘A rave from the grave.'

Performing an adapted veleta, he jogged Josie away. ‘So that's Mr Boot,' said Josie quietly. ‘Celia's mate.' Davies did not know how she meant that. He had told her nothing. ‘What a bleeding sight,' she added. ‘Like a fairground gone mad. I hate all this stuff, Dangerous.'

‘I thought all young people like this. It's pop,' Davies said. ‘I wish I could do it. It would be somewhere to go on a Monday night.'

Josie curled up her nose disdainfully in the half-dark. ‘I can't stand it,' she repeated. ‘I'm folk.'

‘Oh, are you,' he said. ‘What's that? Folk?'

‘Folk,' she repeated carefully. ‘Folk music. I've got eighty-three long players. There's a club called “The Truck Drivers” I go to.'

Davies nodded. ‘I've seen that. In Kilburn. I always thought it was a transport caff.'

She gave a half-inch grin. ‘
This
is the transport caff,' she said. ‘Bloody orange hair. Look at him up there.'

‘I think we'll just quietly hop out now,' murmured Davies. ‘The dog has seen the rabbit and the rabbit the dog. That's all I wanted. He'll be worried now. We'll go and have a pint or something and see Mr Boot later. Thank you for the dance, Josie.'

He dispatched Josie home in a taxi before going back to find Boot. He paid the driver in advance and then saw that she was gesticulating behind the window in an impersonal way. She had edged the window down by the time he had fumbled with the door. Her small face had appeared framed in the aperture. ‘Now, Dangerous,' she warned seriously. ‘Don't—please—get into any more bother. And don't get drunk. And don't stay out late.'

‘No,' he replied to all three demands. She pushed her face through the gap and kissed him inaccurately on his top lip. He patted her face clumsily and then waved to her as the taxi went away.

He returned to the club and strolled in, conspicuously incongruous, among the slight teenagers in the shadows. Boot had gone.

‘He's off early,' shrugged the lady in charge of the cloakroom. ‘He sometimes takes sort of half a night off on Mondays because they don't pay, do they? He's gone. But he's only just. You might catch him in the car park.'

Davies went out hurriedly. The lines of cars at the back lay inert. There was only a motor cyclist, bowed under the egg of his helmet, kicking his machine to a start. Davies walked quickly around the cars to make sure that Boot was not merely lying low. He disturbed three back-seat couples (in one car a recumbent girl had her feet pressed against the ceiling in confined ecstasy), before the motor cyclist droned by and he saw in the car park lights the orange wig curling out of a bag strapped behind the seat.

Boot was beyond the gate before Davies's belated shout escaped. Davies turned and scampered clumsily towards his Lagonda, upsetting his sleeping dog with the urgency of his arrival and the bursting noise of the starting engine. Kitty began to cough irritably. A young voice called out ‘Peeping Tom!' as he made for the gate. He saw that Boot was held up at the traffic lights at the foot of the hill.

Boot had now seen him and he drove the motor cycle smartly along the main road hearing the animal roar of the Lagonda emitted behind him. It occurred to Davies that there was a lot of traffic coming in the opposite direction for a night so early in the week. He kept Boot's ruby rear light just in sight and was surprised to see it sag and suddenly wobble as the machine was turned off the road and into the car park at Neasden Underground Station. He became wedged in some traffic at a junction. He noticed it was swelling from the direction of Wembley. The delay was enough time for Boot to leave the motor cycle and walk into the entrance of the tube station.

Hurriedly, if humanely, Davies threw the canvas sheet over Kitty, who snarled, and then went in pursuit of Boot. He ignored the ticket office and clumped in disarray down to the platform where at once he saw Boot, clutching his crash helmet like a trophy beneath his arm, at the far end. A red train was snaking into the station and Boot kept calm. As Davies stumped towards him he stepped aboard. As Davies hurried the length of the train he saw that it was crammed with men. He reached the final door, the one which Boot had entered, and stepped resolutely inside, forcing himself among the tight, overcoated, enscarved, encapped and encapsuled bodies. There were protests over his entry and his bulk, but the doors closed, crushing him into the mass and that was the conclusion of any arguments.

‘What you fink of the twin-strikers, then, mate?' asked the man next to him.

‘Rubbish,' said Davies, making a guess. ‘Powder puffs.' He could not see Boot in his immediate vicinity. He stood on tiptoe until several of his abutting neighbours told him to stand proper. The man who had asked him about the twin-strikers stared at him, having, in fact, addressed the query to a companion beyond Davies's shoulder, a companion who now emerged and, after joining his questioner in a haughty look at Davies's face, settled into a further discussion of the game.

England. Davies perceived, had been playing, not very competently, at Wembley Stadium. ‘I reckon that referee's a wanker,' said the fan closest to Davies's left ear. ‘And the linesmen. Both wankers.'

‘'S'no use calling them wankers, mate,' replied the man next to his right ear, having overheard the confidence. ‘Not when all the bloody forwards are wankers. And the fucking defence.'

The first man told him to shut his face and there came a verbal altercation followed swiftly by a fist fight, with Davies jammed between the two antagonists. One had, with swift initiative, grabbed the other's England rosette and was trying to ram it into his mouth. A kick landed on Davies's ankle and another apparently found a target somewhere else because cries were followed by a renewed outbreak of fighting. All at once Davies felt like an elephant trapped in a river by crocodiles. He lumbered about trying to keep out of the way while the tight battle jabbed and butted all around him. A scarf was being tightened around a reddening neck. He was trying to avoid revealing he was a policeman but when he was forced to shout this revelation the only reaction was that somebody kneed him in the valley. The entire jammed carriage seemed to be swaying with the battle; arms and fists, heads and oaths, flew about the tubular space. Davies tried to reach for his warrant card but he could not free his hand, trapped beneath an anonymous but hard armpit.

The mêlée was resolved abruptly and simply by the train's arrival at the next station, the doors opening and the bursting battle, or a fair proportion of it, being spilled on to the platform, where it roiled about with increased gusto. When the doors slid to a close again one-third of the original passengers were gone. Such fighting as was left in the train reduced itself to incomplete skirmishes and bitter looks.

A morsel-sized man, almost smothered by his England muffler and rosette, had been pummelled into one corner by the fierceness of the engagement, and now squatted on the floor trying to reassemble his spectacles. ‘I wouldn't mind,' he complained. ‘But they're all supposed to be supporting bleeding England.' Standing immediately behind him, watching Davies, was Dave Boot.

Davies moved close to him. Even the mutterings all around had now descended to sullenness or attempts at a sane analysis of the game. Davies said to Boot: ‘Do you come here often?'

‘Only when there's a football match at Wembley,' replied Boot. ‘Then the roads get jammed. Now where would you be going?'

‘With you,' said Davies simply.

‘Listen, you're not following me to my place. I live with my mum,' said Boot unexpectedly. ‘And I don't want my old lady upset by the police.'

‘Where do you live?' asked Davies.

‘You'll have to wait and see where I get off.'

The train arrived at another stop and more men disembarked. Some waved their rattles in melancholy defiance in the damp lamplit air.

‘I don't mind asking you a few questions here,' said Davies, who did mind. Boot knew it was a bluff. A sharp expression seeped into his eyes. Both were aware that the men around them had all produced newspapers from behind the creases of which they were listening avidly. ‘Go on then,' challenged Boot. ‘Ask.'

Indecision swamped Davies. He looked around at the ears projecting from the papers. ‘I can wait,' he said. ‘I can wait until we get off.'

‘How's your murder?' asked Boot loudly. The eyes joined the ears ascending from the edges of the pages. ‘Fancy you being involved in a nasty business like that.'

Davies glared at him. ‘Shut up,' he demanded throatily. ‘You're showing us up.'

‘Grisly thing, murder,' continued Boot unconcerned. ‘Especially being involved so deep, like you are.'

‘I'll arrest you and drag you out at the next station,' whispered Davies. ‘I'm not kidding.'

‘What for?' asked Boot more quietly. ‘You've got nothing to arrest me for. What's the charge—being cheeky to a copper on the London Underground?'

They were interrupted by the formidable entry of a ticket inspector at the next station. As though he had been purposely briefed he homed straight on Davies. ‘Ticket please,' he boomed. Others around began fumbling.

‘I haven't got one,' muttered Davies. ‘I was…I would have paid.'

‘They
all
say that. They
all
want to pay once they're nabbed,' boomed the Inspector. ‘That's why London Transport is losing money. People like you.'

‘I didn't know how far I was going,' explained Davies hurriedly. He put his head close, almost affectionately next to the inspector's bristly neck. ‘I'm a police officer,' he whispered.

‘Oh, are you now? I've heard that one as well,' claimed the inspector with a booming grin. ‘Well, sir, can I see your warrant card?'

The entire compartment now stood expectantly grouped to watch Davies produce his warrant card. Those without a good vantage stood on the seats or levered themselves up on the hangers. Boot stood watching Davies and his discomfiture with an adjacent smile.

‘Warrant card?' said Davies. ‘Oh, all right. This is very inconvenient I can tell you.' Even as his hand went to his pocket he knew it would not be there. He remembered last seeing it on his bedside table back at Mrs Fulljames's. The hand returned empty-handed. The other hand went into the other inside pocket and then to the outside enclosures of his coat. ‘I had it,' he protested desperately. ‘Somebody must have picked my pocket.'

The inspector laughed knowingly. ‘You haven't got a warrant card, you haven't got a ticket, and you don't know where you're going until you get there. Does that sum it up, sir?'

Davies nodded miserably. ‘I'm afraid it does. But I am a policeman, honest.'

‘He's a friend of mine,' nodded Boot. ‘I can vouch for him. And I've got a ticket.'

‘Are you a policeman, sir?' inquired the inspector looking at Boot with a respect that he had not wasted on Davies.

‘No. But I can identify myself.' He went quickly to his pocket. ‘These are my business cards. And here's a letter from the Mayor of Neasden in connection with some charity work I am performing. It has my address on it.'

Davies, on instinct, tried to get a sight of the address but the inspector, giving him a quick, foul look, took it out of his view. ‘Mr. Boot!' said the inspector. ‘Ah yes, I know you! From my boxing days in Willesden. Remember you well, Mr Boot.' He glanced, still disparagingly at Davies. ‘Well, if you can vouch for him, that's good enough for me. He'll have to pay his fare though. He won't get away with that.'

‘I'll see he pays it to the ticket collector when we get out. We don't know how far we're going yet.'

‘Oh, all right. I'll trust him then,' said the inspector. He turned to the white-faced Davies. ‘Now I'm putting you in Mr Boot's charge,' he said. He wagged a big, red finger. ‘And just remember—you're on your honour.'