Last Detective (28 page)

‘Gather round, gather round,' instructed the lady, flapping her hands at them. ‘Today it's the Argentinian Tango.' The old people all breathed. ‘Aaah!' The lady's skirt, for the occasion Davies imagined, was cut like that of a girl gaucho. It reached to the middle of her short shins. She had legs like logs.

The old folks, about twenty women and seven smug-looking men, shuffled forward so they could see the demonstrations. Their skins were folded and used, their hands shaky, their understanding uncertain, but their eyes were bright. Dancing was a popular afternoon.

‘Gaiety, that's what we must have, gaiety,' announced the instructress. ‘And élan! That is what the Argentinian Tango is all about. So I want you to abandon yourself to the music and the romance. Mr Bragg, the gramophone if you please.'

Obediently an ancient man broke away from the eager crowd and edged painfully towards the wind-up gramophone. He looked so feathery that Davies felt inclined to help him with the weight of the record. He managed that, but puffed out his cheeks violently as he wound the handle. Into the wintry room, with its exhortation to ‘Love Thy God' emblazoned on the far wall, seeped the wheezing sound of South America, played below distant stars many, many years before.

The instructress demonstrated first the basic tango step, the forward glide and the dip of the foot and the body. Davies, standing largely among the small old people, was not difficult to see but she was apparently not surprised at his presence. Now she paused in her Latin progress and asked him to step forward. He felt himself go pale under his coat but the old folks began to shout raucous encouragement and he was pushed forward firmly to the centre of the floor.

‘Perhaps it would be better,' suggested the lady, surveying him, ‘if you danced without the er…garment.'

‘Yes, yes…all right,' agreed Davies. He peeled himself out of the coat. The frail Mr Bragg stepped forward to collect it and at once fell to the floor under its weight. Two other men came forward and bore the coat and Mr Bragg, who kept shouting that he was all right, from the arena.

Davies was instructed to enfold the stumpy lady in his arms. She rolled her eyes provocatively. He had to bend into a question mark to embrace her and this impeded his first-ever attempt to dance the Argentinian Tango even more than would have been the case. For a short woman she was very powerful and she dragged him along like a shunting engine with a heavy load. He somehow concluded the sequence with one knee on the ground in an attitude of gallantry.

‘You are most clumsy,' she said loudly, rejecting his clutching hands. ‘For a young man, most clumsy. What are you doing here anyway?'

‘I'm a policeman,' he muttered helplessly. They all heard him and hummed and tutted between themselves about the well-known clumsiness of the police. He vacated the floor with the single applause of Mrs Whethers, who apparently felt some responsibility towards him.

‘Most of this lot couldn't do any better,' she confided. ‘Silly old sods.'

There was further instruction and then the elderly watchers were told to take their partners for a trial tango. The seven old men were grabbed like prize gigolos and Mrs Whethers claimed Davies and pulled him on to the floor. The dusty rhythm began again and he rambled and stumbled with her, staggering like someone trying to dance in a storm at sea. There was a familiar smell about Mrs Whethers. Mothballs.

There was a good deal of jolly laughing and clapping after the dance and cheerful cups of tea were passed around. The dance lady put on her coat and went out, her stint done, and Davies found himself sitting on a Sunday School chair almost knee to knee with Mrs Whethers.

‘All right, then, what is it?' she said.

She had quite a powerful face for an old lady, not pink and fluffy like some of them, but girded with deep straight lines as though her head were held on with string. The tea they drank was in enormously thick cups. He wondered whether elderly people, gnashing their teeth perhaps or trying to reassure themselves of their strength, bit through more delicate china.

‘Celia Norris,' he said. ‘Do you remember?'

‘I remember,' she said without showing surprise. ‘Never been found. Not a sausage.'

‘Right,' he confirmed. ‘Now I've got the job of digging the whole thing up again, Mrs Whethers.'

‘How's that?' she inquired, enjoying her tea with a serene sucking sound. ‘It's been a long time.'

‘Sometimes these things take a long time,' he said attempting to sound wise. ‘Anyway, I've heard whisper that your husband made a statement to the police.'

‘My late husband, Bernard,' she agreed. ‘Yes, he did. He was willing to swear it on oath too. But he never heard another thing from them, not a word.'

‘Raffle.' The disembodied voice came from behind his shoulder. Mrs Whethers began wrestling with a handbag the size of a cat and produced two ten-pence pieces. ‘You'd better get some tickets as well,' she advised Davies. ‘They don't like it if everybody doesn't put in.' She said it as if they were a foreign tribe indulging in strange insular customs.

Davies burrowed into the pockets of his overcoat. The wasted lady who stood behind him held the book of tickets threateningly like a witchdoctor with an omen. Davies handed her two ten-pence pieces. ‘You have to
give
something as well,' Mrs Whethers advised. ‘A packet of tea or a tin of beans or some cake mixture.'

‘I forgot to bring them,' said Davies. ‘I knew there was something…'

The ticket lady said: ‘Well, you've got to give something. Them's the rules. Right, Mrs Whethers?'

Mrs Whethers nodded grimly. ‘If you don't put something in you can't have anything out, even if your ticket wins. Have you got a pound note?

Davies began reaching into what appeared to be the very fastnesses of his body. ‘Yes,' he affirmed. ‘Yes, I've got a pound.'

‘Good, put that in. It's a good prize. They'll like that.'

Davies gave the hovering lady the note and turned again to Mrs Whethers. To his annoyance she had risen from her seat and was hobbling up and down like a lame sea captain pacing his bridge. ‘I've got to do it,' she explained over her shoulder on the outward run. ‘It goes dead. My funny leg. I have to get the blood moving again.'

Davies sighed, got up and began walking alongside Mrs Whethers. She pushed him away. ‘Sit down,' she said brusquely. ‘It will be circulating in a minute. You can wait until then with your questions. And after the raffle.'

Davies sat down impotently. He could sometimes understand how police officers were accused of intimidating witnesses. Mrs Whethers returned to her seat, her perambulations accomplished, and thrust out a sturdy but damaged leg at him. ‘Feel that,' she invited. ‘Feel the blood moving through it now.'

He obliged patiently. ‘Oooooooo, Mrs Whethers! There's a nice young man!' bawled a gummy old hag in the next tribal circle. ‘Ask him to give me a rub of mine!'

The old ones swayed with merriment but the raffle mercifully intervened. ‘Eyes down, look in,' called a limpid pensioner in a gravy-stained jacket. He called the numbers and the old people pressed forward eagerly to claim the prizes they themselves had provided. ‘Ninety-seven, red,' he called and Davies looked down to see he had the number in his hand. ‘Go on,' urged Mrs Whethers. ‘See what we've won.'

The raffler was holding the pound note which Davies himself had contributed. When he saw Davies coming towards him he quickly switched the prize to a large tin of garden slug pellets. ‘You can't have the pound,' said the stained man firmly. ‘If you put it in, you can't take it out.' He turned to the ancient tribe. ‘It's the rules, innit?' he said. ‘It's the rules,' they chorused in return. Davies went back with his slug pellets and sporting applause. ‘You should have slipped the ticket to me,' whispered Mrs Whethers. ‘You're a bit slow for a copper.'

‘That's what they all say,' agreed Davies. He leaned forward. ‘Now tell me about what your husband saw.' Around him the groups had dissolved into conversation, the pound having been miraculously won by the raffler himself. Mrs Whethers at last looked businesslike.

‘My husband, Mr Whethers,' she said formally, ‘was walking home at about ten o'clock on that night, whenever it was. It still wasn't quite dark because it was in the summer. And he said he saw that girl going down the alley towards the canal with a man.'

Davies nodded gladly.

‘A man,' she nodded firmly. ‘In a dark suit. And not wearing a hat. And he had his arm around the girl's waist. That's what he saw.'

‘You say he made a statement to the police to that effect, Mrs Whethers?'

‘As soon as all the fuss started and it was in the papers, my Bernard said what he had seen, but he didn't go to the police. He was a great one for minding his own business. He liked to live and let live. But the rumour got around the neighbourhood, like the one about what Mr Harkness saw, and this policeman turned up out of the blue and took a statement. But he said the law would take its course or one of these things policemen say. And that's the last that came of it.'

Davies felt his heart move again. ‘Mr Harkness,' he said. ‘Who was Mr. Harkness?'

‘A very old man. We told the police about him too, but he was very ill then, and he used to drink, so I don't suppose they took much notice of him. I mean—how long ago was it now?'

‘Twenty-five years,' said Davies.

‘Well, he would have been seventy-six
then
, old Harkness. So I don't suppose they put much store by him. But he was reckoned to have seen something. But he was ill and old…'

‘Did he have family?' asked Davies. ‘Around here now?'

‘They moved. To Bristol or somewhere. I didn't know any of them very well. I just heard.'

All around them the encampment was breaking up, the elderly tribe gathering its chattels and making for the door. A man approached and asked Davies if he needed the slug pellets and on hearing that he did not, relieved him of them. Davies went towards the door with the hobbling Mrs Whethers.

‘Mr Whethers and me,' said Mrs Whethers. ‘We always wondered why we never heard any more. Not a dicky bird.'

At three o'clock on almost any afternoon he knew where to find Mod. He went to the public library, warm as a loaf in the middle of the chill November afternoon. Davies had been into the library on other occasions but he had never appreciated how comfortable as well as improving it was. Mod had studied there for years.

The entrance hall served also as a small museum where were displayed various objects of local history. A fragment of mosaic, Roman, an axe-head, which had an air of late Woolworths about it but was sworn to be of the Middle Ages; a spade used by minor royalty to plant a commemorative tree which had died a good many years before its planter; a set of tradesmen's ledgers from the seventeenth century; and a policeman's helmet which Davies noticed was significantly dented.

On the walls was an assortment of iodine-coloured photographs, none of them hanging straight. They were of groups of councillors with mayors in Nelsonian hats and attitudes, the official opening of several buildings including the library itself, celebrations for coronations and jubilees, a scene of wartime bomb damage in the High Street and the local company of the Home Guard crouched at the side of the canal apparently in the strong belief that Hitler would launch his invasion of Britain via that waterway.

There was a potted palm at the library door, the only hint of exotica for miles about. On such a winter's day it was pleasant to brush against it as Davies went into the library. His overcoat immediately caught the assistant's notice and he knew he was under observation as a possible book thief. He saw Mod sitting smug beneath a benevolent reading light over a table at the far end of the Reference Room.

‘Lovely,' he sighed approaching Mod. ‘What a fine bloody life.'

‘Hush,' said Mod with the traditional library caution. ‘Would you care to sit down?' Davies sat at the opposite side of the table. It was like visiting some senior businessman in a large office. Mod leaned forward attentively, his elbows on the table, his fingers touching thoughtfully. ‘And what can I do for you?' he inquired in a library whisper.

‘Christ, you sound like the Chairman of Shell International,' muttered Davies. ‘It's a great life, I must say. Sitting here in comfort, drawing the dole, while the likes of me traipse the streets in the rain.'

‘I'm studying,' explained Mod simply. ‘This world is enriched by study, not by tramping the streets.'

‘You could be right. What is it?' He nodded towards the books, their pages open like the palms of many hands on the table.

Mod leaned over conspiratorially. ‘There are still courts in this country,' he whispered, ‘which can impose the punishment of the stocks or a journey in a cart of dung. Have you ever come across anything so amazing?'