Bohemian Girl, The (3 page)

The ride invigorated him. London invigorated him, the day sunny and not quite cool - that tremendous sense of bustle that the city had, of pulsing, as if it were a live, growing thing that was always bursting a skin and emerging in a new one. He would visit a friend, he thought - an acquaintance, at least - at New Scotland Yard and report Mary Thomason’s letter, and that would be that matter out of the way. Let the police handle it. Guilt made him add that first he would stop at his publishers to go through some likely unpleasantness about the novel, which at best was going to be two months late.

He got down at London Bridge and got on a Red 21 and rode it to the Temple and in a light drizzle walked into the twistings of little streets north of Temple Bar - Izaak Walton’s London - to the somewhat ramshackle offices of Gweneth and Burse. His editor was a dry, thin man named Diapason Lang (his father an organist of some reputation), at once severely agitated to see Denton. There was no welcome back to London, no polite chit-chat about the trip.

‘I’m
awfully
glad you’ve come,’ he said, ‘
at last
. Awfully glad.’ Lang was older than Denton, apparently sexless, in love with books. ‘You’ve brought the new book?’ He sounded hopeless; he must already have seen that, unless Denton’s overcoat had a hidden kangaroo pocket, the manuscript hadn’t come with him.

‘The manuscript is in Romania.’ Denton tried to make a light story of it - Colonel Cieljescu, a novel in English as military contraband. ‘I’m putting it down again as fast as I can, Lang.’

‘Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Gwen will be beside himself.’ He looked at Denton as if appealing for help. Gwen was Wilfred Gweneth, the publisher; the Burse of the firm’s name seemed not to exist. Lang picked at his blotter. ‘Gwen’s
most
unhappy about the motor car.’

‘It was seized, too.’

‘Gwen’s terribly upset. He’s said quite unkind things.’ The publisher had bought the motor car in which Denton had made the trip to Transylvania; it was in the contract, part of the deal. When Denton brought it back to London, it was to have been turned over to the firm. ‘Gwen even suggested you
sold
it over there.’

It had occurred to Denton that Cieljescu had let them ‘escape’ so he could keep the Daimler, but he wasn’t about to say that to Lang - right now, it would sound too much like having traded it for freedom. He smiled and pointed out that the vehicle had been insured.

‘Yes - yes - but the insurer is balking. They want proof. They want to know if you reported it to the police.’

‘Colonel Cieljescu
was
the police.’

‘Well, it’s all
very
awkward. Gwen is terribly upset. He blames
me
.’ The original idea for the book had been Lang’s, although it had been Denton who had added, in fact demanded, the motor car. Lang inhaled so suddenly the sound vocalized. ‘He’ll be in a state about the novel’s not being done, too.’

‘I’m working as fast as I can. A month. Lang, you’ve got the book on the Transylvanian trip; it’s going to make lots of money! What’s the problem?’ He had written the travel book as a series of articles as he travelled.

Lang looked at him with sick eyes. ‘He’s talking about taking the cost of the motor car out of royalties.’

Denton needed those royalties to live. He felt anger coming but pushed it back. ‘He can’t do that, as you well know. I’ll sue.’

‘I know, I know!’ Lang’s voice was a wail. He looked at a print on his wall - Elihu Vedder’s
The Nightmare
, a demon looming over a sleeping woman with much exposed flesh - and said to it instead of Denton, ‘We’re having a little party.
Please
come. It may mollify him.’

‘I hate parties.’

‘It’s to launch the collection of ghost stories.
Henry James
will be there!’ Lang, who loved horror in any of its forms, had put together stories from twenty authors, not all of them from the house. Denton was one, James another. ‘It would look
so
well if you came.’

‘And brought the motor car with me?’

‘It isn’t a laughing matter.’

‘I’ll send Gwen a letter explaining everything. Gwen will be delighted.’

Lang groaned, sure that he wouldn’t.

‘Everything will be all right, Lang.’

Lang leaned his narrow head on one dry hand and looked at the Vedder. ‘No, it won’t,’ he said.

Denton gave it up and headed for New Scotland Yard.

‘Well, well, by the saints! How’s the Sheriff of Nottingham?’

‘I wasn’t a sheriff; I was a town marshal.’

‘You’ve lost weight.’ Detective Sergeant Munro of the CID grunted. ‘I haven’t.’

Munro had come limping towards Denton across the lobby, outpacing the porter who’d gone to him with Denton’s card. He was big, as most detectives now were big, with a massive head that seemed to grow into a huge pair of jaws as it went downwards from his hairline, becoming almost Neanderthal. He could be brusque, acid, hard, but he was as dependable as anybody Denton had ever known. And he was good at his job.

‘I was in the clink,’ Denton said with a grin.

‘So I read in the press. Come on upstairs. Cup of tea?’

‘You’ve moved.’

‘I’d moved before you left town - thanks to you, and I do mean thanks, Denton. You got me back into the CID.’

Denton muttered something. Munro had got part of the credit for finding a murderer whom Denton had killed.

‘How’s the lady?’ Munro said.

‘I haven’t seen her yet.’

‘She forgiven you for shooting a bullet past her ear?’

‘She hasn’t said.’ Janet Striker had been held as a shield when Denton had shot the man holding her, who had already slashed her face once. It was true, the bullet had had to pass just above her ear to hit his eye.

They went up a flight of stairs and turned into a corridor where any trace of marble ended and a scruffy look of police business began. At the end was a huge room filled with wooden desks - and men. Denton saw at least a dozen, many in shirtsleeves; a fug of pipe smoke hung in the room, which smelled of the smoke and nervous sweat and damp wool.

Munro waved at somebody and caused two white mugs of tea to appear; he motioned to a chair by a desk that was like all the others. ‘Sit.’

‘No guns here,’ Denton said.

‘This isn’t the Assiniboine.’ Munro was Canadian and had been in the Mounties - the second intake, early days in the Canadian West. ‘We investigate, not shoot it out.’

‘You like it?’

‘It’s heaven, compared to pushing paper like I was. This lot here do nothing but complain; I tell them that a week at the Annexe untying bundles of paper and tying them up again in a ribbon, and they’d sell their wives to get back here.’ He drank tea, looked at Denton, sat back so that his patent chair squeaked on its big springs. ‘All right, what is it? You didn’t come to see me on your first day back in London because you’re in love with me.’

‘I was in the neighbourhood.’

‘Tell that to some sailor on a horse!’ Munro laughed. ‘You’re all business, Denton - I’ve watched you. Don’t tell me you’ve got another corpse for me.’

‘Only a letter. Maybe a missing girl.’

Munro slapped the desk. ‘How do you do it? Twenty-four hours home and you’re making trouble for me! Look, we don’t do missing girls here. We investigate. We—’

‘She sent me a letter just after I left. Months ago.’

‘And she’s actually missing?’

‘She said somebody was trying to harm her.’

‘And she’s missing?’

‘I don’t know.’ Denton leaned forward to cut off Munro’s response. ‘The letter reached me kind of roundabout. I don’t want to make a lot out of it.’

‘Good. Don’t. Drop it.’

‘I thought you’d know how to find if anything bad had happened to her.’

Munro stared at him. His jaws bulged even more. He said, ‘Do you know what “gall” means?’

‘I thought maybe you thought you owed me a favour.’

Munro tipped his head back so he could study Denton down the length of his fleshy nose. He stuck his lips out. He pushed out his chin. ‘You got a name?’

‘Mary Thomason.’

‘What division?’

‘She didn’t give an address.’

Munro made it clear he thought that that was the last straw. He muttered that Denton was going to give him heart failure one day. He gulped down his tea and stamped off through the room to a bank of three telephones on the wall at the far end. When he came back, he seemed better humoured.

‘Two days,’ Munro said. ‘Hope you can wait two days.’

‘Beggars can’t be choosers.’

Munro began to fill a pipe. ‘Beggars, my arse! Well, you’re right I owe you one - wouldn’t be back here if not for you. I’ve put a query in train at the divisions, anything they have on Mary Thomason, same at the coroner’s. If she’s made a complaint or died, you’ll hear of it.’

‘I don’t remember you smoking.’

‘Self-defence in this place. Go home stinking of it, anyway; the wife complains. You don’t have a wife.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Thought there might be something with the lady whose ear you almost shot off. Mmm?’

‘Unlikely.’

‘Oh, well, take that line if you must. How’d you like prison?’

‘I’m taking up your time.’

‘Slack hour. The prison?’

So Denton gave him a sketch of life as a political prisoner in a country that was still squirming out of the mire of the Middle Ages. Munro filled out paperwork and grunted. When Denton was done, Munro said, ‘Been in prison before?’

‘I was a guard once.’

‘Dear heaven. Almost as bad.’ He pushed his papers aside and laid both forearms on the desk. ‘Ever think about joining the police again? I could use a partner with some brains.’

Denton smiled. He liked Munro. ‘I write books,’ he said.

‘A waste and a shame.’

‘Get Guillam.’

Munro made a face. George Guillam was a Detective Sergeant who had accepted a false confession in the crime that had led to Denton’s shooting the real criminal; Guillam and Denton had started off on the wrong foot and got worse. Munro said, ‘Georgie’s in a bit of a funk just now. Not saying much to me.’

‘The business last spring?’

‘Aye, that and me getting some credit. And there’s you.’

‘I didn’t strike on his box.’

‘You might say you weren’t his favourite fella.’

‘He still want to be a superintendent?’

‘In a funny kind of way, he is - acting like a super, anyway, but without the title. They kicked him sideways after the business with you. He’s “on leave” from CID and acting as super of a division of odds and sods - Domestic, Missing Persons, Juvenile, a lot of stuff. Georgie has pals upstairs, but he put his foot in the dog’s mess with that false confession he accepted. There’s some talk it was got with some physical persuasion, too. Georgie did what was right for him, not for the law, and he’s going to be in bad odour for a while. Serves him right, although I don’t say that to his face.’

‘Maybe I should have a word with him.’

‘Maybe you should and maybe you shouldn’t. Georgie don’t forgive easily.’ Munro dropped his voice to an almost inaudible rumble and leaned closer. ‘Georgie piles up grudges like bricks. Says all’s forgiven and then can’t resist the knife when you turn your back.’ He raised his voice to its normal boom. ‘Mind what I say.’ He put a finger next to his nose, an antiquated and strange gesture that made him seem like an actor playing Father Christmas. ‘Now I’ve got work to do.’

Denton found his way back to the lobby and was about to leave the building when he realized that postponing a meeting with Guillam was stupid. Denton didn’t mind being disliked, didn’t mind even being hated if the hater was of the right contemptible kind, but he had once wanted Guillam’s respect and he didn’t see that things had much changed. If Guillam had a bean up his nose, better to face him than skulk away.

The porter led him to where Guillam could be found. Denton climbed the stairs again, went up a second flight this time, followed the man into more barren corridors and stopped by a door that the porter held open. Inside were four men, each at a desk, electric lights burning overhead, a smell like burnt toast mingling with the tobacco and wet wool. All four looked up. Three swept their eyes over him and went back to their work. The fourth stared at him, frowned, got up as if he were in pain and came around the desk.

‘I thought we’d let bygones be bygones,’ Denton said. ‘I was in the building.’ He put out his hand.

‘What bygones are those?’ Guillam ignored the hand.

‘We had some differences a while back.’

‘News to me.’

‘I thought there might be some - feeling - over - you know.’

‘Can’t say I do. No idea what you’re getting at. I got work to do.’

And he turned his back and headed for his desk.

Denton tried to find his way out, got lost, felt the sting of Guillam’s rejection turn to rage. Where was the buoyant mood of the morning? He wanted to kick something. Somebody. A young constable finally had to lead him down to the lobby. Denton steamed through it and aimed himself at the door.

A bench stood next to the porter’s lodge. Several sorry specimens were sitting on the bench. Denton merely glanced at them, details in the landscape to be forgotten, until one detail caught his eye: a raised newspaper, folded almost to the size of a book, the newspaper lowered to show a pair of eyes. And then a hairless face, no red moustache, although his upper lip had a gleam that could have been gum arabic. The newspaper was raised again. On the bench, upside down, a black bowler.

‘The moustache could be false! But who’d be stupid enough to put on a red moustache if he was going to follow somebody, unless he wanted to call attention to himself?’

‘You’ve lost me.’ Atkins put on his deliberately stupid look.

‘Wear the thing, you’re the most memorable man on the street!’