Say Goodbye to the Boys (7 page)

‘He probably slept on the floor. It was way past two when I got him home. We were plastered, Philip. Gone.'

‘And he was in the Royal with you all the time?'

He sighed deeply. ‘I've been answering those bloody questions all day. Will you listen? If Mash wanted to knock off poor bloody Lilian he'd have done it in her place – and why should he want to kill her anyway? For God's sake?' The mist had reached the beach. A sudden chill in the air.

‘I thought you didn't believe in logic,' I said.

‘Tell me what's logical around here. For Mash to confess when he didn't do it? For Marshall Edmunds to know the ins and outs of Market Hall of all places? Is that logic?' I looked down at him. His face was pinched and angry. ‘That Inspector, know what he said? Said “Your big friend would appear to be devoid of memory”! So it had to be a piss-taking exercise, hadn't it? Logical in an illogical sort of way?'

He smiled and I had to smile back. ‘OK, OK. How long will they keep Mash in?'

‘Search me. I'll consult the legal expert when I get home!'

Before we parted on the High Street, he said earnestly, ‘I want you to know that I much appreciate your support this morning.'

‘My pleasure entirely,' I said.

‘But I mean it, Philip...'

‘Next time, count me out, OK?' But he was laughing at me, and in time I had to laugh too.

In Liverpool Street there was a house full of silence.

VII

 

 

 

 

‘I am upset all over,' Laura declared. ‘Yesterday I lived on drugs and cups of tea. I'm not opening up that shop this morning – I'm not! And this evening you come and lock up for me – all right?' She stared at me keenly across the kitchen table. ‘You look washed out to me.'

‘It's because I'm worried about what the neighbours will think.'

‘You can talk!' She flung at me. ‘Smart-mouth talk! They all know you were kept in the police station all day yesterday!' There was a knock on the front door. ‘The police!' She cried, clutching at her breasts.

‘You go and open it,' I said, ‘but don't hurry – it'll give me time to make my getaway.'

‘Philip!' She glared at me.

‘Sorry, Laura – I'm only joking.'

‘It's all joking with you – everything a joke...'

‘Yes – well, I'll go and open it, then.'

‘You sit there!' She held her arms out wide. ‘I'll go!' She backed out of the room. Her nostrils flared when I gave her a little boy wave. I heard the door open – always a sticky one our front door, and I heard MT's booming voice, ‘Good morning to you, Laura!' As I went out to the hall I was surprised that I felt relieved.

‘Philip!' MT bellowed. ‘My dear boy! Laura – I can't begin to tell you how warm I felt yesterday at a show of camaraderie beyond compare. There we stood – one for all and all for one!'

Laura gave a long, shuddering sigh. Mash appeared behind his father; made our little hallway dark.

‘I've brought Marshall along.' MT excelled at the obvious. ‘They let my boy go. They let all of us go. And why, you may ask? Because of British justice, Laura. The finest in the world. Not a stain on anybody's character – I was told that in confidence by the Inspector.' MT jiggled coins about in his trouser pocket as he spoke. ‘You are not to chastise Laura. You are not to be upset. All you need to be is proud, very proud.'

‘Oh, I'm proud all right,' Laura said acidly. I squeezed past her and joined Mash on the pavement. All of Liverpool Street had decided that doorsteps needed a wipe and windows needed a clean.

‘Emlyn's gone to look for the car,' Mash said. ‘I left it somewhere. You all right, Philip?'

‘They're grand these boys, Laura,' MT was saying. ‘One for all and all for one...'

‘Listen to father,' Mash said, a grin on his face.

His car, Emlyn at the wheel, came roaring down Liverpool Street. ‘Get in quick,' Emlyn said, ‘the great detective's on his way.' But it was too late. Amos Ellyott came stumping up the street, waving his stick at the curious. It was a warm, sunny morning but he was wearing a long, flapping raincoat and scarf. ‘It's obviously going to pour down later,' Emlyn observed. The old man pointed his stick at us. ‘If he breaks into a gallop now he'll do us all an injury.'

MT, ever the reception committee, stepped forward. ‘Mr Ellyott, this is a great honour.'

‘Is it?' The old man hissed.

‘It's to Mr Ellyott that thanks are due,' MT, to the whole street. ‘His expert guidance and vast experience...'

‘Nonsense!' Amos declared. ‘Absolute nonsense! No one listened to me. The Chief Inspector, a cretin of some distinction, instructed me to get out. Issued my expulsion! Not even a third rater, that man...'

‘They can't see the wood for the trees,' MT said.

‘Woods?' Amos snarled. ‘Trees? I am not here to discuss flora, my good man! No one is going to push me off the case.' He turned to the three of us. ‘I shall require a little assistance from you foolish young men. There is information I need to know.'

‘We're going to the boat,' Emlyn said hastily.

‘Then I'll come with you.'

MT intervened. ‘It may be – how shall I put it – an arduous walk for you, Mr Ellyott.'

‘Then they must drive me,' the old man said as he trotted smartly around the car and eased himself on to the passenger seat. He sat there, his chin resting on the handle of his stick, and leered at us.

‘Oh, God,' I said.

‘Well we can't leave him here,' Emlyn said, ‘otherwise your neighbours will complain and you'll be handed a notice to quit.'

Mash drove. Emlyn and I crouched in the back.

‘You come and lock up for me,' Laura cried out. ‘I'm not staying in that hall with murders going on.'

We had to hump him over the dune, but Amos was suspiciously nimble on the mud and astonished us by climbing unaided up the ladder to the deck.

‘Sailing south, eh? I'll come with you. I once lectured to the police of Hong Kong in Chinese. I also lectured to the police of Samoa in Polynesian. At least I think it was Polynesian. I am a linguist of some repute.'

‘Oh, I bet,' Emlyn said as we settled him down on a deck chair.

‘Mine was a brilliant family. My father was an antiquarian and a diarist. If one wants to make water what does one do? Over the side?'

‘Just mind which way the wind's blowing,' Emlyn said as we began to sort out the painting gear.

Mash suddenly got to his feet and announced very simply, ‘I'm sorry Lilian's dead – that's all.' We all were, Emlyn assured him. Mash nodded firmly, then he picked up a can and a couple of brushes and began to hum as he stepped on to the ladder and climbed down.

‘So,' the old man said softly, ‘so.'

‘Write it down in your notebook,' Emlyn said, ‘but it wasn't Mash – for sure.'

‘And that's why you decided to confess, both of you? To point out how absurd it was to hold your friend?' Amos tilted his hat over his eyes. ‘Dear me! How noble of you. Or was it because you knew the authorities were bound to get round to you three in time?' Up came the brim of his hat. He stared at us keenly over his glasses. ‘And they will return to you. The relief is only temporary. Once they've interviewed other gentlemen callers. Once they've checked your stories.'

‘It's possible you may never leave this ship alive,' Emlyn said. ‘Grab a paintbrush or go to sleep.'

Amos Ellyott cackled like an old hen. ‘The confessors! What an incredible notion. Straight out of
Boys' Own
, my worldly friends...'

‘How did Mash go on with them?' Emlyn enquired.

‘I am not prepared to divulge information of that kind,' Amos replied stiffly. ‘Not to suspects.'

‘In which case,' Emlyn said, ‘may every passing seagull shit on you!'

Amos chuckled, his chin now deep in his scarf. ‘But what about a man burnt to death in pound notes? Incinerated in genuine notes of the realm, my absurd friends? Now there's a notion for you.' And he left us hanging on that, and slept.

We patched and caulked and painted. Mash sang for most of the afternoon. The old river stank. We were on an island, cut off from the town. We had work to do, and work cancelled out thinking; served as a temporary cure for shock.

Once during the afternoon Emlyn came up the ladder to say he had decided that we had to do a turn for the carnival. ‘We're going to be a jazz band on a lorry and to hell with them,' he said. ‘All we need is a white shirt and a bow tie.' I told him to piss off. No more stunts for me. Especially now. ‘Oh God,' he said, ‘was yesterday too much for you? I'm sorry. But we can't let old MT down.' Piss off, I said. ‘We can't, Philip. We've promised.' You did the promising. ‘Yes but you'll think it over, won't you? Give it some thought?' Today I'm not doing any thinking – about anything. ‘Oh well, – tomorrow, then. We'll have a chat about it tomorrow.'

I was alone with Amos when he woke up. ‘She was killed inside the Market Hall,' he said. ‘Did you know?'

‘Just tell me how she got up there,' I said. ‘That door was locked, and where would she get the keys, tell me? She'd need a key for the padlock on the gates too.'

‘So you have been thinking. And you don't know there is another way up there? Oh come now – you must know. Good God, everybody else in the Market Hall knows. Didn't you ask your stepmother?'

He was sitting up now, giving me all his attention. ‘We had other things to talk about,' I said. ‘Well go on.'

‘A lift,' he said. ‘At the far end of the Hall. Surely you remember that from your boyhood?'

‘That old thing? You pulled yourself up with a rope? Well of course I remember it. They were going to have film shows up there. Before the war. It was to carry all the equipment up. They did away with it.'

Amos preened his moustache. ‘Perhaps I had better come with you to lock up the shop for Mrs Roberts.'

On the way back Mash ran over a nail and we had to get the spare wheel out. Amos Ellyott took my arm.

‘Philip and I can't wait,' he said to Emlyn. ‘We must reach the lady in the shop before the assassin strikes again.' He pointed his stick up the High Street and Emlyn shouted ‘Charge!' And the old man chuckled deep in his throat as we set off.

‘Don't let go of my arm,' he warned me, ‘but contrive to keep your distance at the same item. My bones are very brittle.' People stopped to stare at us. Ceri Price thought we looked a treat. She even came over to tell us. ‘I was married to a lovely girl like that,' Amos declared loudly outside Woolworth's. ‘She left me, of course.'

Laura was struggling with the shutters when we arrived and was only too pleased to let me finish the job.
‘There is no danger, Madam,' Amos called after her, but that only made her heels click a little bit faster on the stone floor of the Hall. I had expected a policeman on guard but there was none. All the shops were shut except for Isaac Moss Cobblers. Amos took a small length of wire from his pocket and slipped it into the lock of the bird man's shop. There was a click.

‘Follow me,' he ordered as he went in. ‘I take full responsibility. Don't be afraid.' I brushed past him and took the stairs two at a time. I was looking down the aisle of chairs when he came panting up. The screen that had been painted on the wall had a door in it now, and it was open. In one corner there was an open stairway to the roof.

‘Observe dimensions,' Amos said. ‘Surely you must have noticed the discrepancy in dimensions when you came here before?'

‘I wasn't looking for discrepancies,' I replied as I went on ahead of him to the door. Through it there was another room, wide as the hall, I guessed. A black room without windows. Amos all but pushed me in. He produced a small torch and let the beam roam along the walls. Totally empty and very clean.

‘Mr George Garston has reported the loss of a bunch of keys,' Amos said. ‘Interesting, don't you think?' The beam of the torch was fixed on a second, narrower stairway leading to the roof. ‘Intriguing, intriguing. An empty room. A suspiciously clean and empty room, wouldn't you say? And dimensions – think about dimensions here too.' A circle of light fingering the room. ‘It was here she came. It was here she was killed.'

We stood on the open roof and looked down at the chimneys of the old town. I was glad to be up there, even if heights weren't for me.

‘Down there – Maldwyn Street,' Amos said. ‘Her body was cast forth from here, wouldn't you say?'

As he said it Mash and Emlyn came up the stairs into the cabin-like structure on the roof. Following them closely came the Inspector's assistant, Mr Stubbs, who was protesting, ‘Not allowed! You have no right to be here! This is evidence!' He banged his head as he came through the narrow doorway on to the roof and stood there patting his gleaming hair. ‘Mr Ellyott! Please! With all due respect!'

But we were watching Mash. He had gone directly to the side that overlooked Maldwyn Street and was looking down, swaying there. ‘Hey – fire escape!' He called to us over his shoulder. Then he went closer to the edge and began to wave his arms about, his knees bending. Emlyn and I ran for him. I grabbed the back of his trousers. He fell on top of us and I could hear his laughter roaring in my ears. ‘Wasn't going to jump!' he protested. ‘Just showing the fire escape, that's all!'

‘You made me very ill,' Emlyn told him.

‘If you please, Mr Ellyott,' Stubbs called out despairingly. ‘I don't want to have to report you.' Emlyn, Mash and I went, meek as schoolboys, but Amos held on for a while to give Mr Stubbs some advice about Police methods in an efficient force.

But we were all in the empty room when we heard the sound of wheels turning, smoothly, softly, turning in oil. A sound, I reasoned, that you could hear only in the quiet of night. It seemed to come from the ground floor – about where Isaac Moss Cobblers had his shop, I thought. And it was rising to our level, like wheels turning in the wall.

‘There will be a door,' Amos whispered, his torch searching. ‘A door that can only be opened from inside the lift.' Out of the floor the noise came. It ended with a snap. Then there was silence.

The beam from Amos's torch was steady on one spot. The wall came away as a small door opened and we were looking at Inspector Marks' backside as he eased himself out. He turned to face us. A hand came up to hold back the glare from the torch. ‘Mr Ellyott,' he said, ‘is it your intention to blind me?'

‘You have no right whatsoever to be on these premises,' the Inspector said. Amos flashing his torch into the lift. Amos inside the lift. ‘Mr Ellyott, please! I don't want to impose sanctions!' Amos pulled the door shut. We heard the lift descend. ‘I am ordering you all to keep out of this,' Marks thundered. ‘Especially that old man!'

‘Inspector,' came Emlyn's voice out of the darkness, ‘what if he has a heart attack in there?'

Marks' torch came on, a powerful beam that burnt on the narrow door. ‘Heart attack?' He said, ‘Oh my God, no!' The lift came to a halt; Amos was having some trouble with the door. ‘Are you all right Mr Ellyott? It's a catch on the right hand side.'