Last Detective (23 page)

She was a rejected-looking woman in her sixties. Her sunken eyes seemed incapable of rising to look at him. She went behind the barricade of sandwiches and began to butter some bread. ‘It gets very muddy out there sometimes,' she said absently. To his surprise she emitted a cackling laugh. ‘Sometimes I think I hear the bell and I think it must be one of my million lovers at the door. But when I go they've vanished and I think they must have sunk down in the mud.'

‘Yes, it's a trifle damp,' said Davies awkwardly. He wondered if his shoes would still be there when he went out. He nodded towards her sandwiches. ‘Looks like a picnic,' he said.

‘Foxes,' she replied. ‘I cut them up every day for the foxes. They come around after dark and sit and wait. They're so handsome. And it didn't seem right, dignified if you see what I mean, to just chuck bits of food out to them, so I do it properly, in sandwiches and they each have their own plates. You should see them eating. It's a lovely sight when it's a full moon.'

Davies sincerely said he could imagine it was. He half hoped she might offer him a sandwich for himself, but the thought obviously never came to her.

‘What did you want then?' she prompted. ‘What did you want with Fred Fennell?'

He knew that when a woman called her husband by both Christian and surname he was not in any kind of favour. ‘Well, just a few memories of his police days, really,' he said. ‘I'm checking on something that happened a long time ago and I thought I might pick his brains.'

‘There's not a lot to pick,' she sniffed bluntly. ‘He's lost all his brains. He's in the looney house, Mr Davies. The mental hospital. St Austin's at Bedford.'

Davies felt his heart plummet. ‘Oh, I'm sorry about that.'

‘He's not. Loves it. Every minute. He thinks he's Peter the Great. Well he did last time I went to see him.'

‘When was that?' asked Davies.

‘Last year.' She cut into the bread fiercely. ‘Twelve months ago.'

‘Why did you stop?'

‘Reasons.' She seemed to be gritting her teeth, trying not to cry. ‘I couldn't stand it. All the horrors in there. I couldn't stand hearing him giving orders to the bleeding Russian court and the like. I couldn't face it. I stopped going.'

She stopped cutting the sandwiches. It occurred to Davies that the foxes were in for a feast that night. ‘It's horrible in that place,' she said. ‘So horrible I can't tell you. You'll see if you go.'

He got up. The smell of the fresh bread and the cold beef was overpowering. ‘I'll be off then,' he said. ‘What shall I say if he asks when you're going to see him?'

She hesitated, then cleaned the crumbs from the knife with her fingers. ‘Tell him…tell him I'll come after the Revolution,' she said. ‘That'll do.'

Immediately he went beyond the gates of St Austin's Hospital, Davies experienced the guilt of the sane going to visit the insane. He drove the Lagonda with consideration through the arched gatehouse and nodded in an agreeably humble way to everyone he saw. At first he was in a wide expanse of playing fields and woodland, but it felt different; it was as if he had entered a strange country. In the distance he could see the bent backs of the buildings among greenery like giants kneeling at a game of dice. He realized that this was a no man's land. There was another, higher wall ahead.

Autumn was thinning the trees and, through a belt of white and shaky birches he could see moving coloured figures. Some men with ropes were sawing loudly in an oak tree around which the road curved. They waved to him from the perilous branches and he gladly waved back. As he turned the curve he saw that a football match was being played ahead; a proper match with goalposts and nets, corner flags, and with the players decked in correct shirts, shorts, socks and boots. A referee, in regulation black, danced around controlling the game. The scene pleased Davies immensely. It was Wednesday morning and he was glad to see them playing at that time of the day and the week.

He slowed the car, stopped it almost opposite one of the goals, a few yards from the touchline which, he was again glad to see, was being overseen by a proper linesman in black shirt and shorts holding a bright orange flag. The linesman smiled at Davies and proceeded to pretend he was walking a tightrope along the whitewashed line. Davies laughed heartily at his joke and called: ‘Good match?'

‘First rate,' responded the linesman soberly, balancing on his imaginary tightrope. His arms went out like stabilizing wings and he prepared to spin slowly and go back the other way. ‘Two good teams,' he added before revolving. ‘Best teams in the world.'

‘Oh,' said Davies uncomfortably.

‘Brazil and England,' said the linesman secretly. ‘Playing for the World Cup.'

There came a burst of action in front of the adjacent goal. A heavy forward of the yellow team trundled the ball through and, having unceremoniously pushed the advancing goalkeeper away with both hands, scored easily and went dancing joyfully down the pitch to the arms and kisses of his teammates.

Davies shouted from his driving seat. ‘Foul! Foul!' The linesmen turned with worried, white face. ‘You think so?' he inquired.

‘He just pushed the goalie out of the way,' Davies pointed out.

A player in the red team standing near the touchline heard him. ‘No goal!' he bellowed across the pitch. ‘A foul! This man says it was a foul!'

An icy fear caught Davies's heart. The linesman was staring at him drop-mouthed, and, across the football pitch twenty-two shouting, arguing, pushing players charged at him with the referee and the other linesmen funeral figures far to the rear.

Kitty, sensing something important was taking place, looked out from below its tarpaulin and, seeing the advancing shirted horde, howled dismally. The sound jerked Davies into fortunate action. ‘Must be off!' he shouted handsomely, jabbing the accelerator. ‘Play up!'

The Lagonda ran forward quickly. At a safe distance he looked in the mirror and saw them standing in a coloured bunch all shouting at each other. The referee was sitting alone under a tree, one linesman was kicking the ball and the other was still tiptoeing the line.

He found he was trembling. Kitty burrowed below the tarpaulin once more. The road was leading towards a great wooden gate, set in a formidable wall; it curved to an apex like the entrance to a castle or a prison. Set into it was an infant door. Davies stopped the car and walked to it. The sadness of the place was settling upon him. There was a silence too, holding everything, the walls, the peeping roofs, and the grimy sky. Against the inset door was fixed an iron ring handle, inhospitable to the hand. He turned it and, somewhat to his surprise, it opened without resistance and the little door swung easily in.

Davies was confronted with a framed scene, much as Alice was through her looking glass. Stretching as far as he could see were desolately well-tended lawns and flower beds, set out in squares and oblongs. They appeared perfectly cultured and kept but looked as though no sun ever shone upon them. Set into this there was a solitary human figure, a woman, a bent back and downturned face overlooking some minute job at the corner of the border just beyond the gate. Unhappy, Davies stepped through.

There was no sign or notice of the way he ought to follow. He was within a few feet of the woman, enthralled by a few daisies she had dug from the flower bed with the prongs of a table fork. ‘Oh, excuse me, madam,' Davies said.

Her face came around first, old but ageless, bright-eyed. It was followed by the muzzle of a gun, a pistol of nasty aspect, which she held secretly against her blue overall. ‘Stick 'em up,' she demanded quietly.

Davies raised his hands above his head. The blood seemed to run down his arms and into his stomach. He stared at the gun. It looked real. ‘I saw you,' she said rising slowly from her knees. ‘I detected you coming in.'

‘Oh…oh, yes,' nodded Davies stiffly. He felt, arms up as he was, that his trousers might fall. ‘I've come to see the superintendent, Doctor Longton. Do you know…?'

‘Keep 'em up,' she warned grimly. ‘And walk.'

He looked wildly about him. There was no other person in the entire garden. It was as though it had all been prepared as a trap for him. She nudged him with the gun and he began to march with his hands held above his ears.

She nudged him through another archway and into a stone corridor, wide, with windows and doors on either side. A man came out of an office with a clipboard in his hand. Davies tried to say something but the man walked by studying the clipboard and taking no heed of the gunwoman or the man she pushed before her. Other people appeared, some in white coats, but his extraordinary progress along the corridor aroused no interest whatever. Some actually wished his captor ‘Good morning'. Eventually they turned into a large hall where a physical training class was taking place. An instructor was demonstrating a bend to thirty or so people who watched and then bent with dedication. The woman marched Davies right across the floor at gunpoint and still nobody made a mention of it. Eventually they arrived in front of a short tubby woman with a steady, red face.

‘Matron,' said the gunwoman. ‘An intruder. He wants Doctor Longton.'

The matron hardly glanced at Davies with his hands still hovering in the air. ‘He's in his office,' she said. ‘Hurry and you'll catch him.'

The muzzle of the gun banged into the small of Davies's back and he was forced to jog across the floor to a further corridor and the entrance to an office. The gunwoman reached around and knocked at the door with the butt of the weapon. A pleasant voice, the voice of someone happy with his work, called out: ‘Come in, come in.'

Relief had replaced consternation in Davies by now and he stood sheepishly with his arms still up as his captor ushered him into the room. Dr Longton smiled understandingly. ‘Ah, you came in the back way, I see,' he said. Then to the woman. ‘It's all right, Marie. I'll take over. Thank you very much.'

The woman went out without a word. Davies said: ‘Can I put my arms down now?' He lowered them. ‘That looked like a real gun to me.'

‘Oh it was,' the Superintendent said. ‘She needs it. We tried giving her a toy but she wouldn't accept it. So we got that one, and she's happy with that. We've taken a few parts out of it, of course, and she has no access to any ammunition. It's her status symbol, if you understand.'

‘Yes, I see,' blinked Davies. He introduced himself and they shook hands. ‘It was just a bit of a shock, that's all. Unexpected.'

‘We expect the unexpected here,' said the doctor as though that was the limit of the discussion. ‘You've come to see Mr Fennell?'

‘Yes, I went to see his wife…'

‘It's a pity
she
doesn't come to see him,' said the other man. ‘He misses her terribly.'

Davies nodded unhappily, knowing that he was treading where he would prefer not to walk. ‘She said she won't come,' he said.

Dr Longton scratched his nose. He was slim and gently bent like a feather. ‘A thousand pities,' he said.

‘I think she found it too much for her,' said Davies. ‘The whole thing.'

‘Most people do,' said Dr Longton. ‘But not as much as the patients.'

‘Yes, I can understand that,' nodded Davies.

‘Mr Fennell is not too bad now, though. He has very good days. It seems to be arrested. His delusions of grandeur, being royalty and suchlike, are less pronounced. I think he would like to see you, Mr Davies. And if you get a chance perhaps you could get his wife to come and visit him. It would make his life much brighter.'

Davies nodded uncertainly. ‘I'll go and see her again,' he promised. ‘I'll see what she says.'

‘Good. I've arranged for you to see Mr Fennell away from the ward. If the others saw you talking they would all want to tell you their troubles. They became stored-up, as it were, here. There's a small consulting room where you can talk.' He hesitated. ‘Without prying too much into police business,' he ventured ‘Would it be possible for you to tell me something of what this is about? I'm thinking of the patient, you understand.'

Davies nodded. ‘Of course. I see that. Actually it's a murder inquiry. It's not quite so dramatic as it sounds because it happened twenty-five years ago. Mr Fennell was a police constable in the area at the time and had some part in the inquiries.'

‘You want to see if he remembers,' said the doctor. He seemed to be considering it. ‘I'd be grateful if you could tread carefully,' he said. ‘Be very careful with him. If he doesn't remember I'd be glad if you'd call it a day and not press him.'

‘I will,' promised Davies gently. ‘I don't want to mess anything up.'

‘Thank you. And don't make it too protracted, if you don't mind. It's a big day for him, you know, having a visitor, and it could be emotionally tiring.' He stopped and thought out the points he had made. ‘Right,' he concluded. ‘I'll take you along there.'