Last Detective (8 page)

‘I can't tell you that.'

She looked at him on the angle. ‘All right,' she said. ‘I'll get her to meet you. There's a Lyons Caff in the High Street, just by the florists.'

‘I know it.'

‘Make it three o'clock in there. She shut the door on you because my dad's at home, I expect. But she'll be there.' She regarded him squarely, a small, confident face protruding from a yellow oilskin jacket. ‘But, mister…promise you won't screw her up.'

‘Promise,' said Davies.

The afternoon closed early as though it were anxious to be quit for the day. Drizzle, the real thing from the sky, not from the cooling towers, licked the shop windows in the High Street and buses shushed by on their way to Cricklewood; Davies loitered across the road from the café, imagining that he merged with the background shadow, his face almost buried by the bowsprit of his overcoat. He felt quaintly confident in his obscurity and was shaken when the three apparent strangers wished him good-afternoon, by name. Mrs Norris approached, unseen and, unerringly picking him out, announced: ‘I'm here.'

Davies, disgruntled, followed her across the rainy road, and into the café. She indicated that she was running the situation by nodding him towards a corner table. Obediently he shuffled off to the marble slab while she joined the self-service line. He watched her from his distance. She had been tall but, although she was only in her fifties, her back was beginning to bend. The face was fatigued and fixed, looking straight at the neck of the woman before her in the queue, her eyes flicking around occasionally but only briefly before returning to the stare. Davies sat and opened the buttons of his coat. An Indian at the next table ate Heinz spaghetti and double chips and was anointing it with whorls of brown sauce. He sang quietly to himself, some song doubtless born in cool faraway hills, interrupting the plaint to slurp loudly from his cup.

Mrs Norris arrived with the tea, her eyes sharp. ‘All right, then,' she sighed tiredly when she had seated herself opposite him. ‘What's going on about our Celia?'

‘New information has come to light, Mrs Norris,' he said in the policeman's manner he sometimes practised before his bedroom mirror. ‘A man has talked. I can't tell you what he has said but he has talked.'

‘Why can't you?'

‘These things have to be proved,' he replied uncomfortably. ‘Without preconceived ideas.'

‘Preconceived ideas,' she snorted into her tea. ‘They was talking about them twenty-five years ago. Is it the same lot of ideas or a new lot?'

He nodded sympathetically. ‘Yes, yes,' he said, ‘I can guess what it's been like for you.'

‘No, you can't,' she whispered, her eyes and nose almost in her cup. ‘Nobody can. She was a good girl, Mr Davies. Very good. She used to bring me flowers and not many kids do that. And they tried to make out she was some kind of prostitute just because they never found her drawers.' She sniffed and when she raised her eyes, Davies saw they were smudgy.

‘Don't cry, Mrs Norris,' he said with hurried helplessness. ‘Not in Lyons.'

‘I won't,' she promised. ‘It's not so easy as you think to cry. Not after all this time.' She paused then looked at him with sad hope. ‘How far have you got?'

‘I've only just started. But I believe that after all this time, people will say things they only
thought
twenty-five years ago, or things they didn't even
realize
they knew.'

She nodded. ‘People do change their tune,' she agreed. ‘I know that. Too well.'

‘How?' he said. ‘In what way?'

‘Well, you know. They're all sympathy and that at the time, then they avoid you and the whispers start going around. About my girl. And they're still at it. I mean, you know she went off once before. She was headstrong like that. One of the bloody Sunday papers brought the whole thing up again a couple of years ago, “What Happened to Happy Celia?” That was the headline. They sent some bloke to see me. I chucked a bucket of soapsuds over him.'

‘You do want the answer, don't you?' he said.

‘Yes I do, but not that way. Not all over the bleeding newspapers. Muckraking, that's all that was. It's got to be done a bit on the quiet. That's the only way you or anybody else is going to find out any thing.'

‘When she went off before,' said Davies, ‘was that with a man?'

‘I don't know,' she replied almost sulkily. ‘When she came back she didn't say. She said she had been away for a change. I never asked her after that.'

The café was almost empty for it was mid-afternoon. Steam rose from the dishes at the counter which had not been in favour at lunchtime. Odours wandered from the back regions. A tramp came in and, after politely taking off his hat and giving his ragged hair a pat with his hand, sat down at a table near to the counter. At that distance he examined the brightly illuminated food like a patron at an art gallery. He knew his timing.

‘Shepherd's pie for ten pence? That's less than half the price,' suggested the woman across the counter.

The tramp shook his head. ‘I only got six,' he answered. ‘All right, six,' sighed the woman. ‘No wonder they reckon you're a millionaire.'

Davies said: ‘They ought to do a tramp's pie and sell it to shepherds.'

Mrs Norris did not smile. ‘There's some good-hearted people around,' was her only comment. She returned her face to Davies.

Eventually he said: ‘Mrs Norris, do you think you could bear to go through it again? To tell me about that one day. I've seen the statements, but I want to hear it from you.'

‘All right,' she said wearily. ‘Can I have another cup?'

He rose. ‘I could do with one myself.'

‘I expect it'll go on expenses, won't it?' she asked genuinely.

‘I'll fiddle it and make it a profit,' he said. He went to the counter and got the teas. The tramp said: ‘Hello, Dangerous.'

Unprompted, she began when he had returned to the table. ‘It was the 23rd of July. She was at home in the morning, helping me. She was very good like that. It was a very hot day. There'd been about a week of hot weather. In the afternoon she went to the Employment place. It was only a little office in those days, not that great big place they've got now.'

‘Times change,' he nodded. ‘She was interested in nursing, wasn't she?'

Mrs Norris nodded. ‘She'd have been a credit. She was a very kind-natured girl.' Her voice was without inflection, as though she were merely reciting something she had said many times before. ‘They had a talk to her about nursing but she came to have her tea and went straight out to that bleeding youth club. She said she'd tell me all about it when she got back that night. And, she never did get back.'

‘You didn't like the youth club?' he said.

‘I don't know,' she shook her head. ‘Nothing was ever said, but there was something
rotten
about it. Father Harvey never watched it like he ought to have done. But he was new here then. But I think he feels guilty about it. I think he knows how I feel about that.'

‘You didn't care for Mr Boot?' suggested Davies.

Her eyes came to life, as though in a moment some faith in him had been kindled. Then she subsided again, ‘No, I didn't like that one,' she admitted. ‘I expect you've seen the pictures.'

‘Yes, the one of Mr Boot, Celia and another girl at some sort of garden fête.'

‘Ena Brown,' said Mrs Norris. ‘As was then. She's Ena Lind now.'

‘Lind? Lind? Who else was called Lind?' he said, trying to remember the names on the statements.

‘Bill Lind,' she filled in flatly. ‘He was our Celia's boyfriend. Just a friend. Like they are at that age. Not really a boyfriend.'

‘And he married Ena, Celia's friend?'

‘Yes. About three years after. They told the newspaper in that article…they said they had been “drawn together by the tragedy” or some bleeding muck like that. Drawn together! She was pregnant more like it. They've got one of those council maisonettes now. She looks like a tart and when I see him in the street he turns the other way. Makes out he don't know me.'

‘And you didn't like Mr Boot?'

‘No, I didn't care for him, neither.'

‘Any idea where he is these days?'

‘He's at Finchley or Mill Hill or somewhere like that. I saw in the paper he used to run a sort of disco place. And now, I saw an advert the other week, he's got one of these sex shops. Suit him, it should.'

‘Still in youth work, eh?' sniffed Davies. He paused. The tea in his cup was beginning to congeal. He drank it quickly and made a face. ‘Did they er…give you her clothes back… eventually?'

‘The police? Yes, I got them back. I've still got them. It wasn't much because it was hot weather, like I said. It was a green gingham dress, a bra and her white socks and shoes: Like everybody knows, her lipstick, just a little Woolworth's lipstick, and her drawers were missing. Everybody.' Her voice was dead.

‘You've still got the clothes, Mrs Norris?'

‘Yes, but they're hidden away. I'm not showing them to you or nobody else.'

‘I see. I understand. Er…the youth that found the clothes in the toilet and took them home. Did you know him?'

‘Poor little devil,' she said unexpectedly. ‘That boy Parsons. The police gave him a hard time. They had to get their hooks into somebody, I s'pose. But he didn't do it, Mr Davies. I didn't know him before that time but I've seen him around since. He plays in the Salvation Army band now. I've seen him in the market. He always nods to me.'

‘What did Mr Norris think about it all?' he asked.

‘What d'you mean—what did he
think
about it?'

‘How did he react?'

She considered the question again. ‘He was like he always is where there's aggravation, shouting his mouth off, charging around, screaming for the police to do something.' She laughed bitterly. ‘Come to think of it that's the only time I can ever remember him
wanting
the police to do something. He was upset, 'course he was, but he shows it different. I woke up in the night and heard him crying downstairs. He felt it all right, same as I did.'

‘What's he
like
, your husband?'

‘Bert Norris is all right, at times,' she said. He could see her selecting the words with care. ‘He's a layabout, that's all. Work-bloody-shy. He's done time, like I expect you know. Silly things. He likes to think he's big. He was like it when I married him but I thought he'd grow out of it. He used to nick ration books then. Now it's car log books.'

‘A man who moves with the times,' observed Davies. ‘Do you love him?'

She seemed incredulous at the question. ‘Love…him? Love him? Christ, that's a funny thing for a copper to ask. I don't know…I live in the same house with him if that's what it means. He's not somebody you can love. You don't sort of connect the word with Bert…not with my husband.'

‘He's a friend of Cecil Ramscar, isn't he?'

The remnants of her stare from her surprise at the last question were still on her face. They solidified.

‘Ramscar? He went off years ago. Never heard of him since.'

‘He's back,' said Davies, deciding to take the chance.

‘Back is he?' she muttered. ‘I thought there was something going on.'

‘With your husband?'

She backed away from the question by returning to the original. ‘Ramscar—he used to come around and muck about when Celia was here. He always had his hands around her bottom and that sort of thing, but there, he would have a try with any female between eight and eighty. He reckoned he was big. He tried it on me once or twice…' She glanced at Davies uncomfortably. ‘I…I was younger then, of course, I didn't look quite such an old ratbag…'

Davies protested with his hands, but she stilled him with hers. He felt they were as hard as dried figs. She went on. ‘He used to tell Bert that he'd like to 'ave me and our Celia in the same bed at the same time. That's how he was. All mouth and bloody trousers.'

‘Do you think he could have caused Celia's death?' asked Davies quietly.

‘God knows.'

‘He was checked out by the police,' Davies pointed out.

‘So was Jack the Ripper, I expect,' she muttered without humour.

She looked up from the depths of her teacup. ‘I'll have to go,' she said. ‘The shops will be closing. If you want to ask me any more, tell Josie. She works in Antoinette's, that hairdresser by the clock in the High Street.'

‘Right,' he said. ‘I will. I'm sorry it's been so painful for you. I hope I can do something.' He thought for a moment. She was gathering up her handbag and her coat. ‘One thing,' he finished. ‘People don't seem to move from this district very much. Most of those who were here then are still here or roundabout.'