Dangerous in Love - Dangerous Davies 02 (14 page)

'That's not to say there weren't vehicles on the road,' said Harrison. 'For all I know there may have been. There's supposed to be a security man on duty. Ask him.'

'Ha,' said Mrs Harrer. 'He is stupid.'

Davies had rarely seen - even in an era of traffic wardens and British Rail porters - a body more unsuited to uniform than that of the security man who had just appeared for duty at the gatehouse of the industrial area. He was young, short and scant, with a shining chin and round, rimless glasses. He had a big hat and a brown tunic. He looked, Davies thought, like a member of the Hitler Youth.

His manner, however, was inoffensive. 'I always wanted to be in the police,' he confided. 'Unfortunately, the height wasn't there.'

'Yes,' said Davies vaguely. 'There is a minimum.'

'You wouldn't think I was perfect for
this
job,' the man went on. 'Physically, I mean. But I can
shout.
My voice carries.' Outside the gatehouse, it was the end of the February afternoon, damp and calm. Lights streamed along the road.

'Let's see,' said Davies, opening his notebook. 'According to your employers, you were on duty here on the night of October 6th last year.' He read from his notes: 'Edwin Francis Curl.'

'That's when the old man went into the canal,' said the security man without hesitation. 'Yes, that's me. They asked me about it when you were making inquiries before.' He squinted through his glasses. 'Taking a long time to find out about it, isn't it?' he said.

Davies sighed. 'It's on the steady side,' he answered. 'But we've established that you were the man on duty here.'

'Right. It was a weekday, so I must have been. I've been on this job since August.' 'You get here at five.' 'Yes. Straight from work.'

'And you leave at eight in the morning
..
. What d'you mean,
straight from work?'

Curl looked embarrassed. 'I shouldn't have said that, should I,' he admonished himself. 'Silly thing to say.' He looked pleadingly at Davies. 'Do you have to tell them?'

'I don't see why,' shrugged Davies. 'What's your day job then?'

'I'm a security man,' answered Curl. 'For another firm. Blue uniform. A better lot than this. Naturally, you have to keep awake all day because it's mostly what we call scrutinizing — keeping check on people going in and out of buildings and that.'

'So you get some sleep at night?'

'Well, I have to. This job is a bit of a steal. Once the gate's closed. I can get my head down after midnight. Look
...'
He reached into a canvas holdall. 'I bring my own Lilo.'

'Aren't you supposed to check in every hour or so?' asked Davies.

'And my alarm clock,' said Curl, producing it in a pleased way.

'Oh, yes. I see.'

'They're not much of a security firm, this bunch,' confided the small brown-shirted man. 'Some very unsuitable types working for them. People with criminal records

'Have you got one?' asked Davies swiftly.

'Me? Oh
...
well, I used to have a bit of trouble
...
horses and greyhounds and that. I might as well tell you because you only have to look me up on your computer, don't you?'

'It's easy,' said Davies. 'When do you get time to eat?'

Curl spread his neat hands. 'When I can,' he said. 'I have to admit I do sneak off to the fish and chip shop.'

'What time?'

'Oh, usually about nine.'

'Did you that night? October 6th?'

'I can't remember, but I probably did. I have a different sort of fish every night.'

'On that night could you have been absent between say, ten-thirty and eleven-thirty?'

'The fish shop shuts at ten.' His hairless face became abruptly wrinkled. Behind the bare glasses, his eyes pleaded. 'Don't tell them if you don't have to. I need the money, Mr Davies, I've got three women.'

Three!'

'You know how one thing leads to another.'

There was a movement at the door. Davies turned. Williams, the manager of the safe company, was handing over a key from the window of his car. His expression solidified when he saw Davies. 'More trouble?' he said.

'Same lot
’
said Davies.

'Christ! Not the old man with the pram!'

'Still him. I was going to come and see you. But you're off home now.'

'Yes, I am.' The security man took the key from him and operated the rising gate.

'Could I have your home number? I'd like to give you a call some time.'

Williams scowled. 'Well
...
I don't see
...
oh, all right. It's in the book anyway.'

Davies wrote down the figures as he dictated them, Williams turned without saying anything further, and drove through the gate.

'He wasn't all that pleased, was he,' observed Curl. Another car drew up outside the gatehouse. Davies could see Mrs Harrer glinting at him through the passenger window. Harrison was driving. He went down the two steps to them. The big woman lowered the window. 'Overtime you work,' she observed sourly.

'Devotion to duty
’
Davies smiled brokenly. 'I wonder if I could bother you both for your home telephone numbers.'

'Why is this?' demanded the woman. The German in her voice thickened. 'What is this business?'

'I might need to call you after hours,' he said pleasantly.

'Mine's here, on my card,' said Harrison impatiently, handing the card across. After a moment's hesitation, Mrs Harrer gave him a card. 'Mine also. Do not ring when it is not convenient.'

Curl operated the gate and waved as the car jerked out into the traffic. 'You really upset people, don't you,' he observed, returning to the gatehouse.

Confidingly, Davies said: 'Let me give you a professional tip, Edwin lad. It might come in useful. People don't like being asked for their home phone numbers. It worries them, upsets them.'

'I see,' said Curl. 'I wouldn't mind that Mrs Harrer's number. I really fancy her.' He looked a little ashamed at Davies. 'All my women are big,' he mumbled.

Davies said: 'I'd like to take a wander around all the premises on this site.'

'Now?'

'Now. By myself.'

'Yes, well, it's all right, I suppose. I mean, if I can't trust you, who can I trust?'

10

The many colours, creeds and cultures wedged into that north-western corner of London had over the years borrowed a little of each other's life, and nowhere was this more apparent than in the restaurant owned by Monsieur Francois Ramchand who came from Auroville near Pondicherry in what was once French India, and who had been trained as a chef in Calcutta, Paris and Hendon. It was called Cote du Ganges.

It was Monday night and there was a table available, big enough for eating the house curry and for spreading out the cards which Mod had brought with him. They were library index cards and upon each of them Mod had printed the scanty clues.

'It's like Happy Families,' summed up Davies pessimistically. Jemma said: 'Except nobody fits anywhere.'

They shuffled and tried again, and again, but no sequence emerged; no connection was apparent. 'Unless,' said Mod ponderously, 'we put this one with this . . .' He rearranged the sequence.
'..
. and this one with this. This gives us a story that Mrs Harrer had a father who was a guard at the prisoner-of-war camp in Silesia
...'

'She's like a mountain,' said Davies thoughtfully. 'The Jungfrau.'

'And her father,' continued Mod, 'murdered the real Lofty Brock, and became a bosom pal of Sergeant-Major Bing and then lived happily ever after at Clacton-on-Sea, curing his coughs with Doctor Collis Browne's Mixture.'

Moodily, Davies tapped the card upon which was written: 'A present from Clacton-on-Sea'. The cow cream jug and Chelmsford Prison, thirty miles apart, are the only links of any sort. The rest. . .'He scattered the cards over the table.'. . . don't add up at all. We've got the prison picture of the nameless lady. But all the records of Chelmsford Women's Prison were destroyed by a German bomb in the war
..
.'

'...
Dropped by the Jungfrau's Luftwaffe uncle,' mentioned Mod.

Mod gathered up his cards, they left the restaurant and went into the windy street. It was March now and moonlit, and the steam from the power station cooling towers blew like long silver hair in the sky. Mod trundled to The Babe In Arms and Davies walked Jemma home.

'Have you thought of the possibility that none of it
does
add up?' suggested Jemma, putting her coated arm into his.

'You mean that I'm
making up
a mystery, a case with no crime; I'm playing at being a big detective when I'm only a small one,' he said gloomily. 'You've been talking to Mod.'

'Since the art of detection is logic,' she pursued, 'would you not agree that Lofty Brock might have had an interesting, even a criminal past without it necessarily catching up with him on the canal tow-path that night? Perhaps, for all his secrets, he just fell in.'

'He
wasn't
Lofty Brock,' Davies pointed out grumpily. 'He was somebody else. He became Lofty Brock in the prison camp - for reasons of his own.'

'That, as you were told by the old soldier, happened in any number of cases. Men took advantage of the confusion to disappear and reappear as somebody else.'

'Shiny Bright,' said Davies doggedly, 'saw and heard something by the canal that night.'

She pouted. 'Shiny Bright,' she observed, 'is scarcely reliable.'

'Somewhere,' said Davies, plodding on at her side, 'there's an answer. There's something smelly in that trading estate. I had a good look around.'

'People don't like being investigated,' she pointed out firmly. 'They get anxious, they do odd things, they look at you in a funny way. That doesn't mean they're murderers. What would happen if Harrison and Harrer, or Shurrock or Williams, went to your superiors and complained about harassment?'

'Don't,' mumbled Davies, closing his eyes.
'Don't.'
He stumbled on a broken paving stone. They were almost at her door. She turned and quietly wrapped her arms about him. 'You're like Don Quixote,' she said. 'Perhaps fighting imaginary wrongs.'

He glared at her, but his expression melted at her smile. 'Maybe you're right,' he sighed. 'I'm really cut out for the detection of petty pilfering.' His head went against her chest. 'Have you got any lodgers?' he asked.

'Not tonight,' she smiled. 'There is a vacancy for bed-and-breakfast.'

They kissed and he said, 'Thanks.' They went into the passage as the telephone rang. She picked up the receiver. 'Okay,' she eventually said. 'If I can help
...'

She turned to see him crestfallen. He stood against the wallpaper in the passage. 'It's all right,' she assured him. 'I think it's being taken care of. It's a gypsy family.'

'Oh,' said Davies. 'Perhaps they'll bring their horse.' 'Shut up,' she laughed, walking into the room. 'Why don't you get us a drink.' He watched her go into the bedroom. There was half a bottle of Scotch on the sideboard, and he poured out two glasses and added water. She came back in a pale robe. He handed her the Scotch and they drank and embraced. 'It's getting towards bedtime,' she said.

'Right
’
he agreed. 'The gypsies may turn up any minute.'

She giggled again and turned into the bedroom. Putting her glass down, she began to take off his pullover, shirt and tie. 'I'll do the next bit,' he said, unlooping his braces. 'Get an eyeful of these.'

He let his heavy grey trousers fall and stood posed in his long Johns.

'Blue!' exclaimed Jemma. 'And not baggy.'

'Skiers wear them,' said Davies proudly. 'So the man said.'

He sat on the bed and, pushing her away a little, he provocatively began to peel down the elongated underpants while whistling the refrain of 'The Stripper' through his teeth, revolving his eyes, rolling the blue flannel down each ashen leg until he finally flicked them off with his big toe.

'Oh, Dangerous!' Jemma collapsed laughing across the bed. Her pale robe fell open as she arched one of her legs. He climbed up beside her and embraced her. 'You're so funny, Dangerous
’
she said, her voice trailing off.

'And you,' he said seriously, 'are so beautiful. You're like winning a gold clock.' Their arms went about each other. The telephone rang.

'The raggle-taggle gypsies-o
’
chanted Davies.

'Leave it,' she said. 'Let them ring back.'

He kissed her softly. 'Answer it
’
he sighed. 'They'll hate being kept waiting.'

Keeping her eyes on him she picked up the receiver from the bedside table. 'It's for you
’
she said, handing it across. 'It's Mod.'