September Song (16 page)

‘Not especially,' I said, trying, unsuccessfully, to stifle a yawn. ‘Bit of an early morning, though.'

‘Hmm,' he said. ‘How is the head now?'

‘Fine,' I said, touching the tender lump. ‘Never better.'

‘Hmm,' he said again. ‘I hope the conscience is in the same condition.'

‘Why wouldn't it be?' I said.

‘Oh,' he said, slowly stuffing his pipe with strands of sweet-smelling tobacco, ‘just that you forgot to tell me that you'd been keeping a fatherly eye on Philip Graham for the last few nights.'

‘I didn't know that would interest you,' I said.

‘I'm always interested in people who may be material witnesses in a nasty murder, Tony,' he said. ‘You know that.' He clamped the pipe between his teeth, but he didn't light it. ‘My sergeant here has a good mind to arrest you for obstructing a police inquiry or some such crime.'

The sergeant, whose name I still couldn't recall, moved forward a little menacingly. He was someone else who didn't like me much. He had very bad breath, I remembered.

‘I've told him there's no need for that,' Rose continued. ‘You're a reasonable man, and you'll cooperate without all that. You'll give us a helping hand with our inquiries if we ask nicely, won't you?'

I shifted uneasily on the sofa, unsure what to make of this. ‘Of course,' I said. ‘If I can help  . . .'

The inspector took the pipe out of his mouth, pointed the stem at his sergeant and positively beamed. ‘You see, Sergeant,' he said. ‘I told you that Tony was an upright and law-abiding citizen, keen to do his bit.' He nodded benignly. ‘Well, now we know, thanks to Mr Jackson here –' he inclined his head at Les – ‘where Mr Graham is currently, and we'll be having a word with him later. In the meantime, it would help enormously, Tony, if you could let us know his whereabouts over the last couple of days.'

I was acutely aware of his keen gaze. ‘Well,' I said, ‘where do you want me to start? Thursday he was filming first thing in the morning at Shepperton. He turned up at the Coach and Horses for a swift half at about half one, and that's where I caught up with him.'

‘Hold on a minute, Tony,' Rose said. ‘That your tie?'

I looked down at Montague Burton's finest dark-blue cravate, put my hand on my chest and patted it. ‘Course it is,' I said, more than a little nonplussed.

‘No, no, no. Not that one,' he said. ‘
That
one.' The stem of the pipe shot out, swift and sharp as an assassin's stiletto, and pointed to the badly crumpled pea-green strip of material by my right leg.

I shook my head. ‘No,' I said. ‘It's a bit sudden for my taste.'

The inspector looked me up and down thoughtfully, as though he was trying to guess my weight.

‘Would you describe yourself as a tall man, Tony?' he said.

‘No. Your sergeant there is tall. I'm not,' I said.

‘No,' he said, ‘I wouldn't call you tall. Not tall enough to be a policeman.'

I waited for him to say something else, but, infuriatingly, he put the pipe back in his mouth, took out a box of matches, struck one and applied the flame to the tobacco in the bowl. He made a few popping noises as he sucked on the pipe, and then puffed out a cloud of fragrant grey-blue smoke. He placed the spent match in the ashtray on Daff's desk, then, still taking his time, turned, picked up Lee's tie and examined it carefully.

‘That's an interesting stain, Sergeant,' he said, pointing it out. ‘Do you think that's blood?'

‘Could be, sir. Very likely,' the sergeant said.

Inspector Rose folded the tie neatly and then looked at me. ‘The thing is, Tony,' he said, ‘a couple of witnesses saw someone in the vicinity of the Frighted Horse last night. About the only things they agree on were that he was tall and skinny. And that he was wearing a particularly 'orrible tie of lurid green.' He paused and puffed contentedly on his pipe for a few seconds. ‘I'm sure that it's entirely coincidence that such a tie is found close to your person, but I'd love to hear about that coincidence from your good self.'

I took a deep breath, stood up and told him most of what I knew. It didn't take very long. After all, there wasn't that much to tell. Lee the piano player was tall and skinny, and he'd been wearing that tie, and he'd been heading to the Frighted Horse. The boys who'd been carved up had knocked him about a bit, so it was probably his blood (if it was blood) on the tie. I even told him how I'd come by the tie.

I admit that I didn't tell him that Ricky Mountjoy and Philip Graham claimed they'd seen Lee brandishing a bloody big knife later, but that was only because I didn't entirely believe it.

I did, though, offer my opinion that Lee was not physically capable of overpowering two young tearaways and slicing them up. The fact that I thought that if he'd had a firearm he might well have shot them didn't seem to me relevant so I didn't mention it.

After I'd finished, there was a long silence in which the sergeant, whose name, worryingly, I still couldn't remember, did a lot of scowling, Inspector Rose puffed on his pipe thoughtfully, Les Jackson looked at his nails, and I sweated copiously.

Eventually, Rose took the pipe out of his mouth. ‘So, where is he now, this piano player?' he said.

I shrugged. ‘No idea,' I said.

Rose nodded and replaced the pipe in his mouth and bit down on it. The sergeant sighed and folded his arms.

‘So,' the inspector said through clenched teeth, ‘where is this –' he paused as if ransacking his memory for her name – ‘Jeannie Summers?'

‘At her digs, I imagine,' I said.

‘And where might that be?' Rose said.

‘I'm afraid I don't know,' I said.

Rose took the pipe out of his mouth again, cleared his throat and then sighed. ‘No,' he said. ‘I can't imagine why I thought you would.'

The portly sergeant coughed, and I found it difficult to repress a smile as I imagined him looking at me dolefully and saying, ‘Here's another nice mess you've gotten me into,' while the inspector sheepishly scratched his head. But he didn't. Instead he looked at the inspector, and he smiled. ‘What shall I book him for, sir?' he said.

‘Preferably something that carries a very long sentence,' the usually amiable Rose said.

‘Come on, Inspector,' Les said. ‘He hasn't done anything.'

Rose held up his hand in a fist and flicked up one finger at a time as he rattled off, ‘Wasted police time. Obstructed an inquiry. Withheld information. How's that for starters?' He shook his head. ‘And I'm sure we can come up with something like “accessory after the fact” if we can get anything to stick to this Lee character.' He turned to me. ‘How do you feel about that, Tony?'

I shrugged. Neither of them had cautioned me, so I wasn't yet under arrest. I wondered if I was going to be. It would cause a few problems with Mrs Williams – Ann – if I was in chokey instead of with her.

‘Hang on a minute,' Les said. ‘Suppose Tony finds this bloke for you. Couldn't you drop all that? He's good at finding people.'

The inspector sniffed. ‘Not in my experience,' he said. ‘Still, I suppose we could turn a blind eye.' He looked at me. ‘What would you rather, Tony?'

‘I'd rather be in Southend, watching the Orient, actually,' I said, ‘but I don't suppose that's on offer, is it?'

The inspector shook his head.

‘And you don't really think that you could get any of those charges to stick, do you?'

He smiled wryly.

‘But your sergeant –' Radcliffe, that was it – ‘would like to have a try, because he doesn't like me.'

‘It's nothing personal, Tony,' the inspector said. ‘Andy doesn't like anybody. It's part of the job. You spend so much time dealing with rogues and villains, you start to think everyone's a rogue or a villain. And they usually are. Me? I like you. But I'd like you a lot more if you could tell me where this piano player is.'

I stood up. ‘All right,' I said. ‘I'll see if I can find him. I have a tie to return to him, anyway.'

‘Uh-uh,' the inspector said. ‘The tie stays with us. It could be evidence.'

‘Not that one,' I said and picked up the pink tie. ‘This one. He leaves them all over the place. I think he uses them to mark out his territory. Must cost him a fortune.'

I nodded to Les and mouthed ‘thanks' at him. He shrugged and thrust his hands into his trouser pockets. He looked even more lugubrious than ever.

The inspector followed me to the door and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Tony,' he said, ‘I meant what I said about liking you, but that only goes so far. You know that.'

‘I understand,' I said.

‘If you're not honest and above board with me, I will have him arrest you.' He looked over his shoulder, back at Sergeant Radcliffe, then he spoke very quietly. ‘We both know those boys were supplying illegal drugs, and we both know that piano player was a customer. While it's not unheard of for unhappy and dissatisfied customers to turn on their suppliers, it's unusual. Most gang members – and these boys belonged to a gang – are attacked by other gangs. I don't think this Lee is our man, but I do need to talk to him. Frankly, I don't have time to go looking for him. I'm too busy following other leads. I'd like to, as we say, eliminate him from our inquiries sharpish. Andy Radcliffe may not appreciate your help, but, funnily enough, I would. It's bad enough having to waste time talking to people like Philip Graham. But at least we know where he is.' He sniffed. ‘You know you owe me a favour or two, Tony.'

I nodded politely and went down the stairs.

Flocks of high-pitched-twittering starlings blackened the sky above Charing Cross Road, swooping, whirling and soaring in their hundreds from one soot- and smoke-stained building to the next as I wandered slowly, and fairly aimlessly, down towards Trafalgar Square. Those in the late Saturday afternoon crowds not used to it stopped to gawp at the spectacle, making progress even more difficult than usual. The racket the birds made inhibited thinking a little as well. But that rather suited me.

I had absolutely no intention of trying to track down Lee or Jeannie Summers until they were due to perform at Pete's Place later. They'd either be there or they wouldn't.

All I wanted to find at that moment was a telephone. There was one outside the National Portrait Gallery in St Martin's Place, and I didn't have to wait too long for the woman inside to finish her call and come out. I felt sorry for the bloke in the queue behind me because I was planning on making two calls.

The cries of the starlings were a little muffled inside the box, but I still had to put my finger in the ear that wasn't to the receiver to hear Mrs Williams' dulcets when I told her I'd be over in an hour. She didn't sound too displeased. Jerry sounded perfectly relaxed, and I could hear something spiky and modern that, of course, I didn't recognize playing in the background. Jeannie Summers had called to tell me that everything was fine (‘Copacetic,' Jerry said, but I asked for clarification). I took that to mean Lee had turned up. I wondered for a moment, but only for a moment, if Mrs Williams – Ann – would care to visit a jazz club later, but I decided not even to ask her. After all, a refusal often offends.

I asked Jerry what he was listening to, and he murmured something incomprehensible about a felonious monk, so I left it at that.

‘I have, though,' he said, ‘just located something you'll love. A recording from a few years back from a trumpet player called Bunk Johnson. He was really big thirty or forty years ago but he lost his front teeth in a brawl, but then – and you'll love this – Sidney Bechet's brother, who's a dentist, fixed him up with dentures. He plays your sort of stuff like a dream. The New Orleans revival  . . .'

While he spoke, I peered through the smudged glass of the telephone box at the passers-by and loiterers, the stale smoke of a thousand cigarettes leaving a bad taste in the back of my mouth.

‘The radiogram is primed and ready,' Jerry said. ‘Just waiting for your return.'

‘That's great, Jerry,' I said. ‘Something to look forward to. I've gotta go now. I'll see you when I see you.'

‘In a while  . . .' he said and hung up.

I'm not what you would call a religious man. Like everyone else, I had my moments during the war, of course, calling on a divine being for preservation during the occasional ticklish moment and promptly forgetting any implied bargain immediately after the danger had passed or been survived. These days I'm more your traditional christening, wedding and funeral sort of church attender – although none of the first two for a long time and not so many of the last for a bit. So, it would have surprised most of those who know me quite well to see me push my way out of the box and, after politely holding the door open for the decidedly cheesed-off bloke standing waiting to use the phone, scampering across the road, past Edith Cavell – who would, devout Anglican that she was, surely have approved – and nipping quickly up the steps and under the portico into St Martin-in-the-Fields.

It was dark and musty inside the little antechamber to the big church. After my eyes adjusted a little to the gloom, I moved away from the door to the right and, lost, I hoped, in the shadows, waited. Then I stepped through into the bright and busy church itself and stopped by the back wall.

I tried to look suitably pious, but I probably fell short by a nautical mile. The suit was crumpled, the tie awry, the hair, though so recently barbered, unruly and the morning's perfunctory shave was no longer standing me in good stead. Maman would have been mortified that I could even contemplate entering God's house in such a state.

I didn't really expect him to follow me inside the church, but people do strange things.