Gently Go Man (5 page)

From the other cupboard Deeming took two balloon glasses and a bottle of Spanish Sauternes. He drew the cork, poured into the glasses, put the plate of sandwiches on the table between them. Then he switched on the player, put a record on the turntable. He turned it down very low. It was Grieg’s piano concerto. He sat down opposite Gently.

‘Like you shouldn’t have kept pressuring Bixley,’ he said. ‘That guy couldn’t have busted off Lister, and he flips his lid in two shakes.’

Gently said nothing. He sipped the Sauternes. Deeming sipped his too.

‘He’s a hothead,’ Deeming continued. ‘We all know about that. He was on a jail kick for pitching. Like it’s easy to see how. But you know something,’ Deeming asked, ‘something that isn’t quite so obvious? We’ve cooled him down since he’s been with us, and like he isn’t pushed, he stays cool. And then there’s nothing wrong with that guy. He keeps it down, he’s a cool jeebie. So don’t go pressuring him unless you have to. We don’t like him ribbed into flipping his lid.’

He looked level with his slate eyes, reached for a sandwich and began to eat.

‘We don’t go for flipping lids at all,’ he said. It’s too square, man. It’s torrid.’

Gently nodded, kept sipping. ‘Where were you on Tuesday?’ he asked.

Deeming finished chewing his sandwich. ‘Up at Tony’s,’ he said. ‘Not busting off Lister.’

‘Have you a bike?’ Gently asked.

‘Sure,’ Deeming said, ‘the mostest going. I ride a Bonneville with all the action, sank a year’s loot in it. But man, it hasn’t a scratch on it, nor any notches on the butt. And Johnny wasn’t bust, you know. Let’s talk up things fundamental.’

‘Murder,’ Gently said, ‘is fundamental with me.’

‘You like salami and garlic?’ Deeming said. ‘Latch on to one of Tony’s sandwiches.’

Gently latched on to a sandwich. The Grieg went on thumping and tinkling.

‘Now the way you see this action,’ Deeming said, ‘is delinquent kids kicking it up. The war generation, you say, cocking the stale old snook at their elders. They’ve got a fresh curve, maybe, but it’s the old complaint they’re hung up with. They want to poke the old man’s snot. They want to act themselves big. That’s the way you see this action, and man, you’re not seeing it so good.’

‘I can see it being lawless,’ Gently said.

‘You’ll never change that,’ Deeming said. ‘That’s a perpetual factor in civilization where every law is an experiment.’

‘An experiment backed by consent,’ Gently said.

‘But still an experiment,’ Deeming said. ‘And backed by the consent of its generation, not by the generation that follows. With them the experiment continues, or as you say, they are lawless. And then the laws become modified by a new act of consent. Today they hang you
for a shilling, tomorrow they lock up the hangman. Like you’re merely stating the obvious by calling any man lawless.’

‘Yet people suffer because of it,’ Gently said.

‘Sure,’ Deeming said. ‘I’m with you there.’

‘And it has to be checked,’ Gently said. ‘Or the next stage is anarchy.’

‘I’m still with you,’ Deeming said. ‘But that’s the process, for better or worse. Society acts, the individual reacts, there’s a percentage of suffering, and there’s modification.’

‘And there’s individual responsibility,’ said Gently.

‘There,’ said Deeming, ‘is the ground of contention.’

He refilled the glasses, took a long sip from his. From the player came a long trumpet-call melting into the note of a single instrument. Deeming paused, listening to it. He caught Gently’s eye, smiling.

‘Like I’ve made a point,’ he said. ‘Don’t knock this action for kicking the law. They kick it in Sunday school circles and all over Squaresville in general. But maybe it gets kicked less with us, I wouldn’t know, I don’t see the figures. But the cool thing, screw, is to keep it down. We aim not to get hung up with the squares.’

‘You’re still cocking a snook at them,’ Gently said.

‘Sure,’ Deeming said. ‘But let’s get on from there. Because cocking a snook is all the squares see of it, and it’s the way it’s cocked that really matters. Like there’s a change they haven’t noticed. Like it isn’t just growing pains any longer. Like it’s a historic reaction going on against a life direction that’s played itself out. You dig it, man, what I’m giving you?’

Gently nodded. ‘I think I do.’

‘Crazy,’ Deeming said. ‘I figured you were smarter than some of these screws. Like there’s a revolution going on, not just in Russia but everywhere. In Russia and China it’s a mass revolution, but in the West it’s individual. Like we’re dragged to death with this society and its nowhere aims and its chromium shop-front. We just don’t go for it, we’re opting out, we’re leaving it be to hang itself up. We want to live it real, man, to touch the real. We’re sick and tired of the illusion. Christ-ish jazz, we’re tired of that, and piling loot, and conning our neighbour. You can knock Russia for being a police state, but hell, it gives a Russian some real to live with.’

‘But you’re no Communist,’ Gently said.

‘Like I told you, we’re personal with ours,’ Deeming said. ‘The Communist deal makes the state a family, but like in the West we’re ashamed of our family. So we kick it, we’re individual. We go for it way out with the birds. That’s making the touch on a personal basis, keeping it down with having relations. You dig relations? It’s overvaluing someone, making yourself too vulnerable. When I feel I might be having a relation I pull up my stakes and get easting again.’

‘That way,’ Gently said, ‘you’ll finish up under a Bo tree.’

Deeming nodded. ‘You’re with me, screw. It might be a Bo tree at that. Like keep it down in every way and go for the final kick in the book. I sometimes think I’ll make that scene. I’m only part way out, yet.’

‘With a begging bowl?’ Gently asked.

‘Right,’ Deeming said. ‘A good Buddhist must beg.’ 

‘If all the world were good Buddhists,’ Gently said, ‘who would fill the bowls for them?’

Deeming chuckled. ‘Like you’ve put a finger on it,’ he said. ‘But all religions are contradictory, and the Buddhist jazz is the least so. I don’t know. I go some way with it. It’s got a logic that sends me. The Christers counter fear with faith, the Buddhists stare it in the eyeballs.’

‘It asks you to be ahuman,’ Gently said.

‘Don’t all religions?’ Deeming asked.

The Grieg thundered to a close. Deeming rose, turned over the record. The muted second movement began, a gentle, nostalgic meditation. Deeming sat down and ate a sandwich, sat listening, his
yes
beyond Gently. Gently also ate another sandwich. A motorbike blasted by on the highway.

‘I’m sorting it out,’ Deeming said, ‘I’m writing a novel, sorting it out. Like it was time it made the record, what I’ve been giving the jeebies here.’

‘I thought it had been done,’ said Gently. ‘By Kerouac.’

‘Kerouac,’ said Deeming, ‘like he’s John the Baptist. But I’m way out further than Kerouac was. I picked it up where Kerouac dropped it.’ He ate and drank some more.

‘I’ll try to give it to you,’ he said. ‘You’re the only screw I could ever talk to, so I’ll lay it on the line for you. Now the big jazz is touching the real – you dig me, man, touching the real?’

Gently nodded slowly. ‘Breaking through the illusion to the essence,’ he said.

‘Right,’ Deeming said, ‘that’s how a square would define touching. You make some action and grab a kick and like it’s wild enough, you’re touching. Now keep with me. Did you ever have a shock off a D.C. system?’

‘Once,’ Gently admitted. ‘It used to be D.C. in my rooms.’

‘It was like this, wasn’t it,’ said Deeming. ‘First it was like your fingers exploded. Then it was like them being burned. Then they exploded again when you broke contact.’

‘That’s roughly it,’ Gently said.

‘Take another instance,’ Deeming said. ‘You’ve turned a corner in a garden. You see a flower, a crazy flower; it sends you, looking at this flower. Now when you first see it you get that explosion, it hits you smack down to your bowels. Then it burns you, you aren’t with it, you just keep looking and thinking at it. Then, when you find you’ve lost touch, you turn away, and it hits you again. Only the first bang is the big one, like it is with the D.C. shock. Are you along?’

Gently nodded.

‘Take another instance,’ Deeming said. ‘You’re coming through a big belt of mountains. All day you’ve had these peaks around you, you’re getting dragged by so many peaks. Then you come over a pass and see a great plain beneath you, and the peaks are standing over the plain, and the plain is wide under the peaks. And that hits you, the plain and the peaks, coming together like that, though you’re dragged with the peaks and the plain is just nothing. But where they meet like that it pulls you up and sends you. You get the on-off-on like I’ve just been giving you.’

Gently nodded.

‘Take the instance right here,’ Deeming said. ‘Go and dig one of these neighbourhoods with all its
contemporary
style action. It’s nowhere, man. It’s a drag. Like you’d throw stones at the windows. Then dig it here, where it joins the old town, and you get the on-off-on again. Like it’s the same with the old town where it doesn’t meet the new.’

‘Is that the reason,’ Gently asked, ‘why you’re living just here?’

‘Too right it is,’ Deeming said. ‘I picked this spot out of a million. Like it doesn’t come older than this anywhere in Europe. The Abos were mining flints here, this was big Abo country. Then the Romans, then the kings, then the Danes and that jazz. And Tom Paine, you dig him? Like I wanted to see his country. Like the States would have been South Canada if it hadn’t been for Tom Paine. And right here, man, you’ve got the collision, where that wire fence runs. And that’s the jazz I’m trying to sound: that the real is timeless, and it’s at the borders. Like you want to keep touching you have to live along the borders.’

He smiled at Gently, lifted a finger.

‘Listen to this,’ he said.

The Grieg had swirled into a crescendo, was fading a moment into soft strings. Then a single flute sounded, filling in a trill like cascaded water, spreading out and losing itself in the heavy rocks of the cellos. Some bars later the piano caught it and made it a crashing torrent, then it lost itself in a thousand echoes of its brief, perfect poignancy.

‘Like that,’ Deeming said, ‘that was Grieg touching the real. You wanted it back, but he wouldn’t give it to you. He kept it timeless, along the borders.’

‘And Lister,’ said Gently, ‘was along the borders when he rode over the verge?’

‘Crazy,’ said Deeming. ‘You’re getting it, man. Like I didn’t think I could put it over.’

Gently put down his glass, watched it, let the Grieg clamour its finale. The gear clicked, raised the pick-up, dropped it on its stud and killed the motor.

‘And Betty Turner,’ he said. ‘Lister would ignore her, of course.’

‘He’d forget her,’ Deeming said. ‘He wouldn’t remember she was with him.’

‘Too bad,’ Gently said.

‘Sure, too bad,’ said Deeming. ‘But that’s the way of it, screw. You’re kidding yourself if you think it wasn’t.’

‘I don’t think I’m kidded,’ Gently said.

‘A square self-kidded,’ said Deeming. ‘Man, we’ll put this bottle out of its misery, then I’ll make with something really cool.’

‘Not for me,’ Gently said.

‘Come off it, screw,’ said Deeming, grinning.

S
ETTERS WAS BACK
at the hotel at breakfast-time carrying a worn, empty-gutted briefcase, and he was shown into the dining-room where Gently was still eating breakfast.

‘We traced the serviette,’ he said, unbuckling the briefcase on his knee. ‘I had Ralphs type his report so you could have it first thing. He ran the serviette down in the Kummin Kafe, in the neighbourhood centre in Dane’s Green. That’s half a mile from Ford Road but only a step from Spalding and Skinner’s. The Turner girl worked there. We think he met her in the Kummin Kafe.’

Gently grunted, not overpleased to be disturbed so early. But Setters was ferreting in the briefcase and eventually handed across the report.

‘The man at the café, name of Greenstone,
remembered
Lister from the published photograph. Said he was regular there at the tea-break and used to meet a girl there.’

‘Did he remember the girl?’ Gently asked.

‘Not to be positive,’ Setters said. ‘They get a lot of
them in there from the offices, there’s more girls than men work there. But Ralphs got some other stuff from him, as you’ll see in the report. It looks as though the sticks were passed to the girl and then she passed them on to Lister.’

Gently hung the sheet over his teapot, went on lading some toast with marmalade. He hadn’t slept any too well, he’d caught a headache from Deeming’s Sauternes. Then, arriving downstairs, he’d seen with surprise that his interview with Deeming had ‘made’ a morning paper. More, it was Deeming himself who had reported it and whose name was given in the byline.

For a little review contributor, Deeming had a nice journalistic touch. The story that followed was slightly mocking, showed Gently as a bumbling father-figure: not explicitly, of course, but by a number of subtle, overt touches. The piece had also been made a vehicle to give some of Deeming’s ideas an airing. He must have wasted no time on the effort, but gone at his typewriter the moment Gently left.

‘I saw the write-up,’ Setters said, his glance moving to Gently’s paper. ‘I should have warned you about Dicky Deeming; he’s never slow to place a story.’

‘I’m used to it,’ Gently grunted.

‘But I should have warned you,’ Setters said. ‘The way he writes it he was stringing you along, he asked you up to clinch his story.’

‘What else did Ralphs get?’ Gently asked.

‘That was most of it,’ Setters said. ‘The rest is down there in the report. I’d say that the girl didn’t want to pass the sticks.’

Gently ate and read. The report was lengthy and detailed. Ralphs had started near the Ford Road site and worked conscientiously back into the town. He came to the Kummin Kafe, where the serviette was matched: there’d been a container of them on the counter near a plastic sandwich-case. Ralphs had seen Greenstone in a private room, had got an account from him of the Tuesday tea-break. As usual, Greenstone had been rushed off his feet, so he hadn’t had much leisure to observe specific goings-on. Yes, there were some girls from Spalding and Skinner’s, and also from a dozen other offices; some fellows, too, clerks and assistants, he didn’t particularly remember whom. He remembered Lister, however, because he came in regularly, and then his picture had been in the paper when ‘all this was going on’. Lister had been wearing overalls with a jacket thrown over them, he’d gone straight to a corner table where a girl was sitting with a fellow. The fellow had also been wearing overalls. Greenstone thought he’d left when Lister arrived. Lister remained some minutes talking to the girl, and Greenstone’s impression was that there was some sort of an argument. Anyway, Lister took something from a tub-bag which was stood on the table, and the girl said: ‘No Johnny, they’re mine,’ or something similar. Later Lister had bought a cup of tea and had taken a serviette from the container, and that was all Greenstone had noticed. He didn’t see if they left
together. Ralphs had shown him a photograph of Elton and asked him if that was the other fellow. Greenstone wasn’t certain, nor could he identify a photograph of Betty Turner. Why was he certain it was the Tuesday? There was a delivery from Mowbray’s, the pie people. Greenstone had been putting pies in the case when Lister bought his tea and took the serviette.

Gently checked through it twice before handing it back to Setters.

‘You think it was Elton?’ Setters asked. ‘Would he be the one who passed her the reefers?’

Gently shrugged. ‘She seemed only just to have got them,’ he said. ‘A pity Greenstone can’t remember what went on between her and the other fellow.’

‘If it was Elton,’ Setters said, ‘it helps the way I’ve been seeing it. The sticks may or may not come into it, but that meeting and argument are significant. Let’s say that Elton went to meet her there, that he knows she’s cooling off from Lister. He tries to talk her round to ditching Lister and maybe into going with him, Elton, to the jazz session. But Betty won’t have it, she’s still sticking to Lister, then Lister arrives and Elton goes off in a paddy. Lister doesn’t like it either, he has an argument about it with Betty, and in the end he grabs her sticks – maybe because she should have had some for him. That way we’ve got some background to what happened outside the milk bar in Castlebridge. Elton is bitter, he tries to quarrel with Lister, and later he rides him off the road.’

‘It hangs together,’ Gently admitted. ‘But it might have been two other people in the café.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Setters said. ‘It fits together too neatly. We wanted a bit more to build on than just that incident outside the milk bar, and this gives it to us. We’ll get the truth of it when the girl can talk again.’

‘If she’ll talk about it,’ Gently said. ‘She sounded as though she wanted to protect Elton.’

‘She’ll see it differently,’ Setters said, ‘when I can show her the case against Elton.’

Gently poured a last cup, began to stoke his pipe.

‘Any news about Elton come in?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Setters said, frowning. ‘It’s beginning to bother me, that is. He’s been adrift for nearly a week now, and it’s not as though he was a professional. I rang London like you told me and had another talk with them this morning. They’ve had a check-up in Bethnal, but Elton’s not been seen there. A kid on the run with no money, I don’t like that one little bit.’

‘Meaning,’ Gently said.

‘Well …’ Setters opened his hands. ‘You get hunches that don’t add up. I keep starting to think that Elton’s dead.’

‘Mmn.’ Gently lit the pipe. He broke the match into a tray.

It doesn’t add up,’ Setters repeated. ‘But I can’t get the idea out of my head. If I’m right, then it’s suicide, and that could hardly go undiscovered. I don’t know, I’m a pushover for hunches. But I wish we could find that kid.’

‘You’ve checked on his pals?’ Gently asked.

‘Yes,’ Setters said. ‘We’ve checked twice over. Latchford’s a small place, it’s isolated. I’ll swear on oath that he’s not in Latchford.’

‘How about outside it?’ Gently asked.

‘Take a look at the map,’ Setters said. ‘It’s open country for ten miles round, except the Chase, which the rangers watch. The rest we’ve tackled, every cottage and farmyard – and there’s precious few of either. No, he’s out of the Latchford area. Unless he’s pushing up daisies somewhere.’

‘He’ll turn up,’ Gently said. He pushed back his chair, rose, and stretched. ‘I think I’ll talk to that milk bar,’ he said. ‘What was the name and address again?’

‘The Ten Spot Milk Bar,’ Setters said. ‘In Prince’s Road. Not far from the station.’

‘In the meantime,’ Gently said, ‘we might take a search warrant to Elton’s house. His sister has probably cleaned up the traces, but we can look. There’ll be no harm in that.’

He drove out of the Sun yard, where the stagecoaches had wheeled in, across the bridge over the River Latch and past a dull straggle of flint-built dwellings. A fingerpost pointed to Castlebridge, twenty-four miles, then he was out on the wide brecks with a reef of the Chase spreading in from the right.

It was a heavy October day, the sun hazy in a white sky. He swept by still-leaved, wiry birches, and later past coppery oaks and yellow horse-chestnuts. At
Oldmarket
, thirteen miles from Latchford, a string of race-horses trotted on the heath. Their coats looked liquid in the soft-filtered sun and two of their riders were wearing pink and blue shirts. Through the town the grandstands appeared on the right, heavy-shadowed,
lonely, far-distant from the road. A few miles further on lay a military aerodrome with planes standing shaggy in dew-drenched covers.

Castlebridge was coming to life as he drove through the out-streets. Vans were busy, there were reckless droves of starved undergraduates on bicycles. Buses, filled with gown workers, were sedately threading their way to the centre, and people were hurrying along the street which led from the station. Gently swung into Prince’s Road, drove slowly down it. It was a wide road lined with a mixture of residential and commercial properties. He noticed a Victorian Gothic church, a red-brick Veterinary Institute, a garage and a tyre-store interspersed among rooming houses and small hotels. The Ten Spot Milk Bar was nearer the town end of the road. It lay between a surplus store on one side and a furniture store on the other. Across the road from it was a free car park which stretched over to a street on the far side. Gently drove into it and parked, got out, crossed the street.

He paused to take in the front of the milk bar, which was only then opening. It ranged the width of two shop-fronts and consisted of down-to-the-pavement windows. The windows were framed with thin fluted pillars that spread into arches at the top and the glass was misted inside so that the lights behind it shone through blurredly. Over the windows was a neon name-sign and a large painted ten of spades card. In the windows hung plastic menu-holders and neon signs reading ‘snacks’, ‘lunches’. There was also a large poster advertising a ‘Weekly Jazz Stampede’, given alternately by the Castle Cats and the Academic City Stompers.

He went in.

Behind the windows was the usual plastic-
and-chromium
bar, high stools, range of counters, section of tables for served meals. A pale blonde woman in a pink overall-coat was wiping the bar with a dishcloth. A coffee machine was steaming near her and charging the air with warm coffee smell.

‘Yays?’ she said to Gently.

‘Is the boss in?’ Gently asked.

‘Are you a traveller?’ said the pale blonde.

‘In a manner of speaking,’ Gently said.

The pale blonde looked him over, didn’t seem to like him much. She flicked the dishcloth over the chrome, dropped it in a bowl under the counter.

‘Down there,’ she said. ‘Mr Leach is in the cellar.’

‘Thank you,’ Gently said.

The pale blonde made no comment.

What she had indicated was a gloomy stair-entrance under a small mezzanine floor at the end of the bar: from which, however, carpeted steps descended, and over which was an illuminated arrow. Gently went down the steps. They turned left at a half-landing. They gave into a long, windowless room lit at present by a single bulb at the other end. Along the walls some chairs were stacked and in a corner a few tables. The floor at the sides and back was carpeted but was polished wood in the centre and at the lit end. There, under the bulb, stood an orchestra dais, painted black with silver trimmings. A man was sitting on the orchestra dais. He had some boxes of chocolates on the rostrum beside him. One of the boxes was open and had apparently
been spilt: the man was dusting the spilt chocolates and carefully replacing them. He heard Gently and came to his feet.

‘You,’ he said. ‘What do you want down here?’

‘Are you Mr Leach?’ Gently asked.

‘Yeah,’ the man said, ‘Joe Leach. So what?’

‘I want to talk to you,’ Gently said. ‘About last Tuesday evening.’

The man stood scowling at him, one of the chocolates in his hand. He was around fifty, about five-eight, stockily built with powerful shoulders. He had a round head and a short neck and the thickened nose of an ex-boxer. His mouth was small but thick-lipped. His eyes were muddy-coloured and squinting. He wore a long jacket in silver grey with silver streaks woven into it, a cream shirt with embossed stars and a pale blue bow-tie. His trousers were pale blue to match the tie. His shoes were white-and-tan and had pointed toes.

‘What are you?’ he said. ‘Another screw, are you?’

Gently mentioned his credentials.

‘Yeah,’ said Leach. ‘I thought you was one. Funny that, how you can tell a screw.’ He put the chocolate back in the box, nudging it along into place. He picked up another one and examined it. ‘So what are you after now?’ he said.

‘I told you,’ Gently said. ‘I want to talk about Tuesday evening.’

‘You know about it,’ Leach said. ‘A couple of hours I was with the screws.’

‘We know some more now,’ Gently said.

Leach polished the chocolate. ‘What?’ he said.

‘Just a few more details,’ Gently said. ‘So I thought I’d pay you another visit.’

He went up the steps on to the dais and sat down on a low rostrum beside Leach. Leach kept on his feet, polishing the chocolate. Then he niched that one back into place, too.

‘Prizes,’ he said. ‘Spot prizes. They go down big, a box of chocolates.’

‘You had an accident with that box?’ Gently asked.

‘Yeah,’ Leach said. ‘I dropped the bleeder. Lucky none of the chocs were bust. What more do I have to tell you about Tuesday?’

‘Did you know Lister by sight?’ Gently asked.

‘I’d seen him around here,’ Leach said.

‘Deeming, Elton?’ Gently said. ‘Salmon, Knights, Sidney Bixley?’

‘I knew Elton,’ Leach said. ‘Maybe the others, I wouldn’t know.’

‘Deeming’s about thirty,’ Gently said.

‘So he don’t come here,’ Leach said. ‘They’re all of them youngsters that come to the jazz nights, not above twenty, any one of them.’

‘Bixley’s twenty-two,’ Gently said. ‘About your build, good-looking, wide mouth.’

‘We get above a hundred here on a jazz night. I can’t remember all that lot, can I?’ Leach said.