Last Detective (33 page)

Josie's footfalls progressed deftly along the pavements while Davies's large feet made only a muffled scraping in the gutter. He chose to walk there so as to bring their heights somewhere into proximity although even with the adjustment he still looked down at her.

His overcoat hung largely about him while she was small and neatly wrapped as a package. They walked without touching or speaking. He had not told her that he had found her sister's body.

Close to her house was one of the district's innumerable alleys, afterthoughts, shortcuts, planning compromises, sprouting through the lines of streets. As they went past she caught his large hand and encouraged him into its darkness. He stood there, awkward as ever, she with her back to somebody's fence, he facing her but only touching her by placing his hands lightly about her waist. She regarded him morosely in the gloom.

‘Oh, Dangerous,' she said. ‘You'll never make a teenager.'

‘I can't remember being much of a teenager even when I was one,' he confessed wryly. ‘And now I'm a bit far gone for necking against fences.'

‘God,' she sighed. ‘You stand there like a dummy from Burton's window. Have a go at kissing me. Go on.'

He eased forward from the waist and her face rose to kiss him. They had taken some more of his bandages off that day so that his face was now exposed although he still looked oddly like a man peering through a window. With the kiss she pushed her slight body closer to him, unbuttoning the overcoat briskly as she did so. He folded it protectively about her. They had spent half an hour that evening going over his notes written on the paper appropriated from Minnie Banks, the school teacher.

‘I'm glad you've told me everything,' she said. ‘About Celia.' Then she repeated: ‘That's if it is everything.'

‘There are further inquiries,' he said looking down at the crown of her dark hair.

‘Further inquiries,' she mocked gently. ‘You can't help sounding like a copper, can you?' Then she said: ‘You remember that day by the Welsh Harp you told me that Percival was your proper name. Well it's not, is it.'

‘I lied,' he said. ‘It's Peregrine.'

‘Bugger off,' she sighed.

There was a long enclosed silence from within the coat. Then she said: ‘Dangerous, I've got something to tell you.'

He laughed gently and patted her on top of her head. ‘What is it?' he asked.

‘I've found something out.'

‘What?'

‘My father
does
know where Ramscar is.'

He eased her away and looked down at the defined, pale face. ‘Where is he?' he asked.

‘I said
he
knows,
I
don't,' she replied. ‘I wasn't going to tell you. You've had enough beatings-up as it is. But I've begun thinking you ought to know.'

‘What's he told you?'

‘I didn't tell you before, but he had a heart attack yesterday. In the hospital. Brought on by being duffed up. It wasn't much as heart attacks go, but it's scared the living daylights out of him. He thinks he'll die if he has another one. I went to see him and tonight he was in a terrible state. He's got all confessional. He started doing the “my dearest daughter” act,' she laughed caustically. ‘After all these bloody years.' She glanced up at his chin. He was still waiting. ‘Ramscar's up to something very big, according to the old man. And very soon.'

‘What sort of thing?'

‘I don't know. Even the old man doesn't. But I reckon he's got a good idea where Ramscar is hanging out. That's why he feels safer in hospital.'

‘He's probably right,' nodded Davies. He looked at her steadily. ‘Will you find out for me?'

She did not reply at once, but remained hidden inside his coat. ‘I'll think about it,' she told eventually. ‘But I'm not making any promises.'

‘If we know where he is we can wind up the whole business,' said Davies. ‘Get him.'

‘Will you put your hands inside my dress for a minute, Dangerous?' she asked. ‘If I undo the buttons.'

Bemused at her habitual change of direction he did not say anything. But she undid the buttons on the front of her dress, carefully, and took his hands and pushed them inside against some material covering her small breasts. He could feel the brief point of each nipple. He bent forward and kissed her on the face. ‘What's this thing you've got underneath?' he asked.

‘A vest,' she responded simply. ‘My mum makes me wear a vest this weather. Even now she's up at Luton I still wear it. A promise is a promise. She knitted it herself. Yards of it. It goes down for miles, Dangerous. Here, go on, give it a pull.'

Smiling, he did as she instructed. Using both hands he began to tug at the vest and it came up, and continued coming up, from somewhere in her nether regions. Josie giggled. ‘I told you. There's yards of it. It's like a bale of bloody cloth.'

Eventually the garment was assembled above her waist, making her dress bulge spectacularly. She laughed quietly and gave a mischievous wriggle. It fell down, dropping beyond her skirt and hanging to her knees. Davies clasped her to him. ‘Do you want to come in the house?' she asked. ‘It's empty.'

‘I thought you were staying with some other family,' he said anxiously. ‘I hope you're not in the house by yourself.'

‘I'm not,' she assured him. ‘I'm living with the Fieldings two doors up. But I've still got our key.'

‘It's time you got some sleep,' he said gently. He put his arms protectively about her. ‘When it's all done,' he said. ‘All finished. Then I'm going to take some leave.'

‘And you'll take me too?'

‘If you'll come. When I was a boy I was sent up to Stoke-on-Trent once. I've always thought of going back.'

‘It sounds dreamy,' she said. ‘I've still got a week of my holiday to come. Stoke-on-Trent!'

‘You'd better go,' he said. They kissed seriously and he helped her to tuck the extraordinary vest away. Then they walked along the street to the house where she was staying. He said good-night and she went into the house. He had walked a few yards down the street when the door opened behind him and Josie came out again to the pavement. ‘Dangerous,' she called. There was something different in her voice. ‘The hospital phoned. He's had another heart attack. I've got to go.'

He waited until two o'clock in the painfully familiar surroundings of the hospital. It was cold and desolate in the waiting room. When she came out he saw that she had dried tears smudged about her eyes.

‘He snuffed it,' she said. ‘Six minutes past one.'

He had often wondered at the curiosity of people recording the exact weight of a baby at birth and the precise time of death. Why not the time of birth and the weight at death? ‘I'm sorry, Josie,' he said, drawing her kindly to him.

‘He thought I was Celia,' she shrugged.

He telephoned for a taxi and they sat in the waiting room until it arrived. They said very little either there or on the journey to the house of her friends. As she got out of the taxi and the front door of the house opened, she kissed him dumbly on the cheek. ‘Ramscar's at a place called Bracken Farm,' she said. ‘Uxbridge way.'

It was ten miles away, part of the dead land between the town and the eventual country, a place of pig farms, scrap yards, small untidy fields and struggling hedgerows: Davies collected the Lagonda and drove out there through the cold, early hours. Kitty moaned grotesquely for the first part of the journey, taking unhappily to being disturbed, but then settled to a bronchial sleep under the tarpaulin once more. Davies did not tell anyone he was going. It hardly occurred to him. He had his own score to settle.

He had telephoned the Uxbridge fire brigade to find out the farm's location. He did not want to ask the police. It was at the end of a rutted lane off the main Oxford road. He drove down it carefully, headlights out, threading the Lagonda between piles of rubbish, wrecked vehicles and other peripheral trash. There was a gipsy encampment one field away and his approach set some dogs baying. He cursed them. He could see lights ahead, a high illuminated window, which he thought might be a watching point. He pulled the car close into a farm gate and went studiously forward on foot.

Everything about him smelled damp. Mud eased from beneath his feet with stifled sighs. There were two big cars standing in the yard of the farm. The house looked substantial but unkempt even at night. Apart from the light in the high upper window there were two lit but curtained windows on the ground floor. He moved, large but silent, into the yard. He touched the bonnet of the nearest car. It was warm. So was the next one. He intended to try and get to the window, but he guessed there would be someone left outside to keep guard. He saw the man come around the corner of the house while he was shadowed by the cars. The man was lighting a cigarette and grumbling to himself. Davies got on his hands and knees and shuffled to the door of what looked to be an outside lavatory. It was a coalhouse. His eyes were accustomed now to the dark. There was a scattering of coal on the floor and a coal shovel by the wall.

Davies could hear the man moving about outside. Then he walked right past the open door of the outhouse. Davies picked up the shovel. It was the normal household implement, fashioned from one piece of metal, the handle formed by turning the metal into a short tube. Pointing the tube forward, Davies left his concealment. The man was standing only four yards away smoking and looking out to the anonymity of the ragged night. Davies approached and pushed the circular end of the shovel into the pit of the watcher's back.

The man went stiff, but he could feel the round impression well enough. ‘Drop your shooter on the ground,' said Davies. ‘Behind you.' With a shrug the man reached in his pocket and dropped his gun on Davies's toe. Davies picked it up.

‘Right, we're going to walk towards the house.'

The man spoke. ‘The whole lot's in there,' he said quietly as if trying to convey a favour. ‘If there's any shooting, mate, I don't want to be in it. I don't reckon this fucking thing at all.'

‘How many?' asked Davies.

‘Seven,' said the man.

‘I've got the place surrounded by hundreds,' Davies told him. ‘Just walk. Now.'

They progressed gingerly along the narrow path of the farm's front garden, like partners on a high wire. Fifteen feet from the door was an empty dustbin. Davies noted it grimly. Then he whispered for his captive to stop. ‘I'm going to make things difficult for you, son,' he said quietly. ‘But, get this, if you try anything, or make a row, I'll shoot you. Got that?'

‘Got it,' nodded the man. Davies bent and sweetly put the dustbin over the man's head and shoulders. The man shivered and staggered for a moment, but recovered and stood there like some strange midnight robot. Davies jogged him forward with the coal shovel. He had the gun but he used the shovel in case the man should know the gun was not loaded. They went to the door.

It was a big Georgian door and Davies saw with satisfaction that his dustbinned prisoner would be able to get in. There was a low brass doorknob. He turned it and the door swung in. He pushed the man forward into the room. ‘My old man's a dustman,' he announced walking in behind him. ‘Anyone move and they're a goner.'

A group of men were sitting around a table eating fish and chips. All the faces came up and around to him. He recognized Ramscar at once. ‘I've come for you, Ramscar,' he said.

‘Fuck it,' said Ramscar taking a chip from his mouth.

A small, tanned man, sitting at the near side of the table suddenly jumped up and, with a wild cry, ran towards Davies. Davies banged him on his approaching head with the coal shovel, but the diversion had been enough. In a moment they had rushed him. They came like a rugby scrum flying across the room. They hit him from all directions at once and he felt himself reeling. There were shots and he felt his legs burning. Then lights. But somehow more logical than the usual exploding lights in his head. Someone shouted: ‘Piss off, there's coppers outside.'