Last Detective (35 page)

They all stopped sympathetically when they saw him in the chair. ‘Oh dear,' said the dance teacher. ‘Whatever have you been up to?'

‘Practising,' said Davies.

‘I knew you'd do yourself an injury,' she replied confidently. ‘Altogether too unsupple. No rhythm.' She returned to the elderly class. ‘Right, old people,' she called. ‘Finish for today. Let's all have one good clap and leave it there.'

They banged their hands together and those that had not already stiffened up during the pause stamped their feet a few token times, then spread out about the hall for teatime. Mrs Whethers, clucking sympathy, brought a free cup of tea for Davies but Mod had to pay for his own. They sat down in a triangle.

‘Mrs Whethers,' said Davies. ‘I'm sorry to bother you again but I wanted to ask you one more thing.'

‘Fire away,' she said jovially. ‘I didn't do it.'

‘Indeed not. But, Mrs Whethers, is there any chance that Mr Harkness is still alive?'

She looked at him in astonishment. ‘
Of course
he's still alive!' she exclaimed. ‘I took it for granted you knew that. He's a hundred and one. It was in the local paper back in the summer. He lives in Bristol with his daughter or somebody but she sent the bit of news to the
Citizen
.'

‘He was seventy-six twenty-five years ago,' nodded Davies. ‘That's how you knew his exact age. Because of his being a hundred and one.'

She smiled in an old way. ‘I always was good at sums,' she said.

‘And I thought we were talking about somebody who was dead,' he sighed. ‘I must go and see him.'

‘You'd better get those wheels turning, then,' she laughed. ‘At a hundred and one you don't know where you'll be from one day to another. How about buying a ticket for the raffle?'

St Fridewide's Church had a van, fitted with seats for use on parish-outings and it was in this, with Father Harvey driving, that Davies journeyed to see Mr Harkness at Bristol. Fortunately the centenarian lived in a ground-floor flat and with Mod, who had never been to Bristol but had eruditely lectured on the place throughout the journey, pushing, the invalid chair was manoeuvred through the small entrance hall and into the old man's sitting room.

‘He's still getting dressed,' his elderly daughter said. ‘He takes his time at his age, you understand, but he won't let me help him. He says I'm too old to dress myself.' She was a grey tub of a lady. Davies wondered what her father would look like.

It was a pleasing apartment, its expansive front window framing the choppy water of the Bristol docks, with the enclosing land easing itself up from the shore on all sides. They could see the hull of Brunel's fine old ship
The Great Britain
lying in her special berth.

‘That ship and my father are both over a century old,' she said. ‘They sort of keep each other company.'

She asked them if they would like coffee. Father Harvey had parked the van and gone to visit a retired priest, a drinking companion of former days.

‘Mr Harkness will be very glad to see you,' smiled his daughter. ‘He was very excited when I told him you had telephoned. He loves to talk over old times. I told him you were a policeman and he seemed more taken with the idea than ever. This is quite a big day for him. He'll probably wear his red velvet jacket.' She went and listened at the door and then returned. ‘Normally that's for birthdays only, his velvet jacket, although I don't suppose, at a hundred and one, he can hope to get a great deal more wear of it now.' They were aware of a movement in the passage outside the room. ‘Ah, I think he's arrived,' said the lady. She turned warningly. ‘One thing I must tell you. Mr Harkness is deaf.'

Through the door shuffled the centenarian, almost pixie-like in his smallness, a jovial pointed face, bright china eyes, and pink-cheeked. A little dewdrop dangled like a decoration from the tip of his nose. He wiped it away with the sleeve of his red velvet jacket. ‘Hello, hello,' he greeted them. ‘I'm Charlie Harkness. I'm a hundred and one years old.'

His very presence made them glad. Davies smiled, so did Mod. The daughter looked pleased.

‘Sit down, sit down,' called the old man blithely.

‘I'm a bit on the short side. They won't have to dig out much earth for me.' He cackled at his joke. They sat down grinning. He said he would like his morning milk with a few drops in it.

‘I'm supposed to be deaf,' he confided when the lady had gone from the room. ‘But I'm not as deaf as I make out. I only pretend to her because otherwise she rambles on all day, and I don't want to listen. You know how women get when they're knocking on in years. But if you get close enough to my left ear I'll be able to hear you fair enough. And I've got all my nuts and bolts too. So I'll know what you're talking about.' Davies had a mental picture of him in the witness box.

Mod was looking at one of a series of sere military pictures on the wall. ‘You fought in Zululand, then, Mr Harkness?' he remarked.

‘Zululand? Oh, yes I was there. Fighting. Not that it did much good. They're all in Bristol now, you know. Last summer I went out for a bit of a stroll and there's blackies all over the place! I thought to myself at the time, last time I saw a Fuzzy-wuzzy as close as that he was stuck on the end of my lance.'

His daughter brought in a tray with the cups of coffee and the beaker of milk. Mr Harkness sniffed the milk to make sure she'd splashed the scotch in it. ‘I heard what you said,' she reproved. ‘About blackies. You can be sent to prison for saying things like that these days. And Mr Davies is a policeman.'

‘Blow it,' returned the old man. ‘There's not a prison could hold me.' He stopped and considered Davies. ‘Oh yes, you're from the force. I'd forgot that. What are you after, young man?'

Davies felt relieved that he had been saved the approach. ‘It's something that happened a few years ago,' he said moving close to the ancient ear. ‘And I wondered if you would remember something about it. Back in London. Do you remember a girl called Celia Norris…?'

The name did not register. Davies could see that. ‘Oh I've known a few girls in my time…' began the old man with customary joviality.

‘She disappeared,' continued Davies. ‘In fact it seems she was murdered.' He saw the alarm jump into the woman's face and she began to move forward protectively. But Mr Harkness pushed her away excitedly. ‘Ah that. Oh, I remember that, all right. The night I fell in the canal.'

‘What can you remember about it?' called Davies, relief warming him. ‘Tell us everything you can remember.'

‘Oh, I remember, I remember,' said Mr Harkness making a little song of it. ‘I used to drink a little drop in those days. Well, I was a youngster then, in my seventies, I suppose. But that night just about put the end to my drinking, my big drinking anyway. Because I fell in the bleeding canal and I went home in wet things and I got bronchitis and pneumonia and all the rest of it. They thought I was going to collect my cards, I can tell you.'

‘That was when I took him firmly in hand,' interrupted his daughter. ‘I nursed him better and I kept him away from the bottle. My husband had just passed away and Mr Harkness was all I had. I've kept him well. Well enough to see a hundred and one.'

‘For Christ's sake, don't go on so, Dulcie,' said Mr Harkness, irritated. ‘They've come to hear
me
not you. Why don't you take the cups out?'

‘No,' she replied firmly. ‘I'd like to hear what this is about. It all sounds a bit unpleasant to me.'

Davies nodded to her. She sat down and folded her hands in her rounded lap. Mr Harkness ignored her. ‘Yes, I remember it.'

‘Mr Harkness,' said Davies creeping close to the fragile ear. ‘What exactly did you
see
that night? Did you see a girl?'

‘I'd been to the Labour Club,' recalled the old man, determined to tell it his way. He closed his eyes reflectively. ‘We used to have some very good times there at the Labour Club. You could get pissed there for a couple of bob in those days. Easy.' Dulcie drew in a deep breath but Davies's hand asked that she should not interrupt. The breath softened to a sigh.

‘And that night I was drunk as a monkey. Hot summer that was and I'd taken on a load of ale, I can tell you. That's why I tumbled in the canal. Blind drunk. Blotto. I used to go home along the canal bank, like it was a short cut for me, and I was leaning over, I remember, trying to see myself in the water. Just where that lamp is on the bridge. Or was, I don't know whether it's there now.' He stopped. He seemed breathless. Davies turned to his daughter. ‘Is he all right?' he whispered. ‘I don't want to distress him.'

‘Are you still listening?' demanded the old man. ‘I'm just getting to the interesting part.'

‘Still listening,' nodded Davies.

‘Well listen, then,' said Mr Harkness. ‘Next time you come I might be dead and gone so I won't be able to tell you a sausage, will I?'

‘Please go on.'

‘Where was I? In the water? No, looking down at it. Anyway in a trice I was
in
the bloody water. I just fell in. That sobered me up a bit. I can still feel the cold now. It stinks too, that canal. Everybody's shit goes in there. Dead cats and everything.'

Davies nodded agreement.

‘And it was while I was in the water, hanging on to the bank actually, that I saw them.'

‘Them? Who?'

‘The policeman and the girl,' said Mr Harkness patiently. ‘On the bank. I was in the dark, hanging on to the bank and they was on the path at the side. At first I thought I was in luck there being a copper handy. I mean, generally you can never find one when you want one. But there he was and there was me in the canal. But I was just about to holler and I saw he was kissing the girl. I thought, oi oi! There's little of what you fancy going on here. So I stayed with my head out of the water and they were on the bank. At first I thought they was cuddling, but I couldn't be sure about that. Because he sort of pulled her away towards the alley that goes up to the pawnshop.'

‘Towards where the old Home Guard blockhouse used to be?'

‘That's it. That's just it. I forgot that was there. I think they'd knocked it down by then, but it used to be just there.'

‘And you're sure you saw all that?'

‘Sure? Of course I'm sure. I wouldn't be telling you would I? I thought somebody would come around to see me from the police station because I told Dulcie here what I'd seen. After all the fuss about the girl, I mean.'

‘I thought he was rambling,' said his daughter. ‘He was ever so ill. Bronchial pneumonia. He wasn't far from dead. It was a year before he was really right. That's when we moved out here to Bristol. I'm glad we did. Bristol air's kept him alive.'

‘How dark was it?' asked Davies. Mod was sitting staring at the photographs of the Zulu wars. He got up to inspect one closely as though he did not want to listen to what was not his business.

‘Not very dark,' said Mr Harkness thoughtfully. ‘Except under the bleeding water. That was smelly and dark. But it was summer, like I said, and it was quite light really. And there was the light from that lamp on the bridge.'

‘So you're sure in your own mind,' ventured Davies, ‘that it was a policeman and a girl. Not just a courting couple?'

Mr Harkness smiled felicitously. ‘Oh, it was a copper all right. I'd been in court for drunk and incapable so many times that I knew a copper when I saw one. I even saw
who
it was.'

He paused. Davies, tight as a drum inside, stared unbelievingly. Mod was standing and staring too. With my luck, thought Davies in deadpan panic, Mr Harkness will now drop dead.

‘Well,' said Mr Harkness, more alive than any of them. ‘Do you want me to say who it was?'

‘Er…yes, please,' nodded Davies with stiff calmness. ‘That would be most helpful.'

‘Well I knew him because he'd run me in so many times,' said the old man. ‘Some of the young coppers were all right, but he was a miserable bugger. Yardbird, his name was. Police Constable Yardbird.'