Last Detective (34 page)

Before he tumbled to what he now recognized as unconsciousness Davies looked up to see the face of a strange police inspector. ‘Just right,' Davies managed to smile. ‘Everything okay?'

‘Great,' grunted the inspector. ‘Except the bloke you crowned with the shovel is a bloody American ambassador.'

The desk sergeant was looking through the crime book for the local reporter when Davies propelled his wheeled chair through the police station door. The lady cleaner and Venus, who was just on her way to her evening patrol, had helped him up the outside steps.

‘Interesting one here,' said the sergeant. ‘Theft of rare minute palms from Kew Gardens. General to all stations, this…' He saw Davies and came round the counter to shake his hand. ‘So glad you're all right, Dangerous. The old man's upstairs. I'll help you with the lift.'

The sergeant and the reporter got him into the lift. He knocked on Inspector Yardbird's door with his toe and after the customary pause Yardbird called him to go in.

His wheeled chair rolled through the office door. They had re-bandaged his head and set his right leg and left ankle in plaster. There was not much they could do about the bruising on his ribs except let it heal. The nurses had given him a joke season-ticket to the hospital.

Yardbird looked up from behind his desk. ‘Ah, jolly good. I think we did jolly well, Davies,' he said.

Davies moved his head gingerly. ‘Yes, sir, I think we did.'

‘We…ee…ll, we got Ramscar, which was the whole object of my plan from the very beginning, as you will appreciate, Davies. And that's a feather in the cap of the division. On the other hand to hit a United States diplomat on the head with a coal shovel was pretty unfortunate.'

‘I'm sorry,' shrugged Davies. Every movement seemed to hurt. ‘I didn't know who he was. I thought he was one of the gang. Nobody told me.'

‘We
couldn't
tell every Tom, Dick and Harry, Davies,' yawned Yardbird. ‘It would have been gossiped all around the place. We knew that Ramscar was lying low because he was involved in something big, much bigger than anything he had done before. We knew he had become involved with what we call “Overseas Interests” you understand.'

‘Yes. I understand,' said Davies.

‘And these Interests had decided to kidnap this American wallah on his way to the Airport. Which they did, of course, but fortunately we nailed them.'

‘Oh yes, we nailed them,' replied Davies.

‘Quite a feather in the cap of the division, as I mentioned.'

‘Yes sir, you said.'

‘Once I'd got you to actually concentrate on the proper job in hand, it worked like a charm, didn't it? We got Ramscar.' For the first time Yardbird got from behind his desk. He kicked the wheel of the invalid chair as though to make sure it was safe. ‘Well,' he said. ‘As I've said before this is all good experience for you.'

‘Great experience,' agreed Davies.

‘How long will it be?' He pushed his expression in the general direction of Davies's injuries. ‘Couple of weeks?'

‘Two months, they say,' said Davies. ‘And a bit of convalescence just to get the feel of my legs again. I may go to Stoke-on-Trent.'

‘You'll like that,' muttered Yardbird absently. ‘In the meantime perhaps you'd like to give your thoughts to the business of who stole that brass bedstead from your lodgings. And the antique hallstand. That landlady of yours, what's her name, Mrs Brownjohn?'

‘Mrs. Fulljames,' said Davies.

‘Yes, her. Stupid old cow. Button-holed me at the Chamber of Commerce Dinner the other evening and demanded that something be done about it. It does look a bit bad, I suppose actually having a CID man in the house and having unsolved crime hanging about. Have you given it any consideration at all?'

‘I've thought of very little else,' replied Davies. It did not appear to penetrate. Yardbird appeared submerged in worries.

‘And there was another thing, while you're here. That idiotic dog of yours. It bit three policemen during the raid on the farm.'

Davies nodded. ‘I know. It doesn't like coppers. It's had a go at me before now.'

‘Well you must control it, you know. If not, have it put down. Might be the best way in the end. Get you into no end of bother.'

Davies said: ‘Right, I'll see he behaves. And I'll think about the brass bedstead. Can I go now, sir? My arms get tired.'

‘Yes, yes. Off you go. I'm busy as hell. And…Davies…'

‘Sir?'

‘Keep out of aggravation, eh?'

As he went through the corridor Davies could clearly hear Yardbird laughing at his own joke.

Father Harvey trundled Davies in his wheeled chair alongside the canal. Davies was glad of the privacy because their progress through the High Street had been approaching the triumphal. People he did not recognize, but who clearly knew him intimately, approached to inquire about his injuries and to shake his hand. Mr Chrust appeared at the door of the newspaper office and had shown him a copy of the
Citizen
embellished by Davies's chair-borne photograph, while from the upper windows the sisters-in-law waved in bright sympathy. Madame Tarantella Phelps-Smith hooted greetings from her door and shouted clairvoyant encouragement: ‘You'll be better soon. Your lucky colour is blue! Blue!' Even his wife Doris, shopping with Mrs Fulljames, had come out of the bakers and given him a jam doughnut. ‘It's getting like the Entry of the Queen of Sheba,' commented Father Harvey.

Josie joined them at the canal bridge and helped to get the wheeled chair down the inclined path to the canal bank. She walked with them hungrily nuzzling a lunchbag.

‘I hear through my excellent intelligence services that a police award is to be made to you,' mentioned the priest. ‘So your wounds will not have been entirely in vain.'

‘Listen, Yardbird wouldn't recommend anyone for a sick pass let alone an award,' observed Davies. It was a nice day for that town at that time of year. Ducks followed the fitful sunshine on the straight water. Josie emptied the crumbs from her lunchbag into the canal. The ducks clamoured as though it were already spring.

‘Somebody over the top of Yardbird has put you up,' said Father Harvey. ‘I get to know these things. The confessional is not merely for the telling of sins, you know, Dangerous. It is useful for handy tit-bits of information.'

‘How's the confessional box anyway?' inquired Davies over his shoulder.

‘The new one is fine. Never heard better confessions. But the one I built myself was more frail than the parishioners, I'm afraid. Mrs Bryant, who becomes a trifle histrionic during the unburdening of her soul, put her elbow through one of the panels. So I rang the bishop and kicked up bloody hell and they've sent a new portable effort, in plastic you'll know, pending the arrival of a proper replacement. It was there in that plastic shell, that I heard the whisper of your impending award.'

‘Award?' Davies grinned. ‘
I'm
the mug who did it all wrong. If Josie hadn't telephoned the police to say I was on my way to Bracken Farm I'd still be there now. Buried under the cowshed.'

His voice slowed as they approached the footbridge, the three of them, the priest, the policeman and the poppet, and fifteen yards away, beyond the allotment hedge, Celia Norris was buried. He glanced at Josie. She was devouring a yoghurt from a small tub. ‘I thought you'd have the sense to go with other coppers,' she said. A strawberry blob squatted on her chin, like Celia again. She wiped it away. ‘I thought even
you
would have the bleeding gumption to do that, Dangerous. But then, when I got in the house, I thought probably you
wouldn't
have the bleeding gumption. So I rang nine-nine-nine.'

Although they talked, Davies's awareness of their location and his sadness because of it, seeped to the others. They turned at the bridge and, now silent, went back the way they came. The ducks, spotting their return, queued up hopefully. A water rat dropped without fuss into the brown depths. ‘Dangerous,' said Josie suddenly. ‘How old is Doris?'

‘Doris? God knows. Thirty or thereabouts.'

‘And Mod?'

‘Mod's in his forties. I think.'

‘You think. Do you know the age of
anyone
in that house of yours?'

‘No…no, I don't think I actually do.'

‘Father Harvey,' she pursued. ‘How old do you think I am?'

‘Ah, it's a game,' decided the priest. ‘Well, let me see. Oh, you're a young girl. What, nineteen, twenty or so.'

‘It's funny,' she said thoughtfully. ‘When my father died the other week, I didn't know how old he was. And I'm not sure about my mother. I'm seventeen.'

Davies was eyeing her. ‘What are you getting at, Josie?'

She laughed. ‘Blimey, you look like Chief Ironside in that chair, Dangerous. On the television.'

He did not pursue it then. The priest got the invalid chair up to the road and then left them. Josie was to push it along the street to the library for the afternoon and Mod was to propel it to The Babe in Arms at the opening time and then to ‘Bali Hi', Furtman Gardens. The sunshine persisted uncannily. Around the power station cooling towers played small cherubs of steam. ‘What was all that about people's ages?' he asked.

Josie waved to a friend in the street. Then she began speaking as she pushed. ‘It was just you said a funny thing, Dangerous. Before all the farm business, when you told me all about Celia. Or you
reckoned
you'd told me all. You remember when we went all through your notes? All on that school notepaper.'

‘Yes, of course. What did I say?'

‘About that old Mrs Whethers. You'd written down everything you remember her saying, right?'

‘Right.'

‘The old man. Mr. Harkness. How old did she say he was when it all happened with Celia?'

‘Seventy-six,' he said. ‘And that was twenty-five years ago.'

‘But according to her, she hardly
knew
him. She'd just heard that he'd seen something that night and she knew he'd been ill.
But to know that he was seventy-six, twenty-five years ago is very odd
. Not seventy-five, nor anything else. Exactly
seventy-six
.' She had halted the chair in the middle of the shopping street now and Davies was painfully half-turned around to her. She went around to the front of the chair and knelt, pretending to rearrange the rug around his legs.

‘What did she say, exactly, this Mrs Whethers?' asked Josie.

‘Have you got those notes?'

Davies hurriedly thrust his hand into the deep inside pocket of the overcoat. ‘My favourite reading,' he said. He began to turn over the crammed, scrawled pages of school paper. ‘Here, it's here,' he said. ‘Mrs. Whethers. Ah, yes. She asked me how long ago the Celia business was and I said twenty-five years and she said…'

‘Mr Harkness was seventy-six,' Josie concluded. ‘She knew his
exact
age, but she didn't know how long ago the murder was. What a funny thing.'

‘She calculated it by deducting the twenty-five years. She was in no doubt, either. Seventy-six.'

‘All I'm saying,' said Josie. She had gone behind and began to push the chair again. ‘Is that it's strange she knew his right age, but she didn't know him well. We've just tested you and Father Harvey out. People hardly ever know other people's ages. Sometimes not even their own family and friends.'

‘So,' he said. ‘There's got to be something special about Mr Harkness, so that she is quite sure of his age.'

She nodded. ‘You've tumbled. I reckon he's still alive, Dangerous. And he's a hundred and one.'

M
od pushed him all the way from the library to the Kensal Green Old Folks' Club. It was the hardest afternoon's work he had done for twenty years.

The ancients were doing a
paso doble
, stamping worn feet and cracking rheumy hands over their heads, led by the fat and fiery dancing teacher. Mod was astounded at the activity. ‘I wondered why none of them ever gets to the library,' he said.