Gently Sinking (13 page)

Gently smoked.

‘It’s bleeding true,’ Osgood said.

‘We’ve checked your alibi for Tuesday,’ Gently said.

‘I was home Tuesday.’

‘We’ve checked it out. We can’t place you there all evening.’

‘Listen,’ Osgood said. ‘I was there. You can’t prove I wasn’t there. I come home. I stayed home. I never shifted all evening.’

‘But,’ Gently said. ‘Why were you there?’

‘Why?’ Osgood gaped.

Gently nodded. ‘Why weren’t you at the Coconut Grove, for example, or Grey either? On Tuesday?’

Osgood’s mouth opened and closed.

‘I don’t know nothing about Grey,’ he said.

‘Oh, you’d know something about him,’ Gently said. ‘You and he sharing the same girl-friend.’

‘That ain’t true!’

‘The same girl-friend,’ Gently said. ‘Grey and Sadie, Sadie and you.’

‘She never had nothing to do with Freddy!’

‘But she did with you.’

‘She didn’t. She didn’t!’

‘She did,’ Gently said. ‘She’s been seen with you, Osgood. At the club. At your flat. After she’d broken with Blackburn. Sarah Sunshine says she’s been out with you. She broke with Blackburn, switched to you. I wonder why?’

‘It’s lies!’ Osgood gabbled. ‘All bleeding lies. You can’t prove none of it.’

‘I can prove all of it,’ Gently said. ‘I have one, two, three witnesses. She switched to you – not to Grey, who she was running around with before – but you. And Blackburn dies. And Grey comes up with a rot-proof alibi. So where does that leave you, Osgood?’

‘I ain’t saying any more! I didn’t kill him!’

‘Prove where you were Tuesday evening.’

Osgood’s blue eyes rolled.

‘You can’t,’ Gently said. ‘After 9 p.m. you can’t be placed at your flat. Sadie Sunshine was missing all evening. Blackburn died about 10 p.m. She set him up. He was too much of a handful for his killer to tackle man-to-man, so he had to be made defenceless. Then the killer came. Right on cue.’

‘Gawd, but I was home!’ Osgood croaked.

‘No,’ Gently said. ‘You weren’t at home.’

‘I was, I was,’ Osgood croaked. ‘I can prove it, bloody prove it.’

‘So why not prove it?’

‘I bloody will!’

But he hung on, panting, eyes swelling at Gently. All his heavy face was dragging, working, creasing with indecision.

‘So?’ Gently said.

‘I don’t have to prove it!’

Gently shrugged, reached for his matches.

‘Listen!’ Osgood said. ‘You bloody got to listen – it’s all lies about me and Sadie! So she went with Freddy – I don’t know – Freddy’s laid a few black girls – but not with me. That’s lies! She ain’t never been with me.’

‘Three witnesses lying?’

‘Yeah – lying!’

‘And you don’t want to prove where you were on Tuesday?’

‘I don’t have to—’

Osgood broke off, his face sagging in bafflement.

‘I want a lawyer,’ he said. ‘I ain’t saying any more.’

‘Perhaps you’ve said too much already,’ Gently said.

‘I didn’t kill him! I want a lawyer.’

‘Yes,’ Gently said. ‘You want a lawyer.’

They took Osgood out. Gently ordered Grey to be brought in. Tallent watched thoughtfully as Osgood went, then snatched himself a cigarette.

‘There’s a lying bastard,’ he said. ‘And a stupid bastard on top.’

‘Perhaps not so stupid,’ Gently said. ‘He had an idea where to stop.’

‘Yeah,’ Tallent said. ‘You had him somehow. He damn nearly came across. Then like he was figuring he would make matters worse, so he started blocking and bawling for a lawyer.’

‘That’s very perceptive,’ Gently said.

Tallent grinned, said, ‘I have moments. But still I don’t like that bastard much. I’d go to evens he’s not our chummie. What about you, sir?’

Gently shrugged.

‘I can’t see Osgood using a knife, sir,’ Stout said.

‘Sonny boy,’ Tallent said.

‘But I can’t, sir,’ Stout said. ‘He looks more like a strangler.’

‘Sonny,’ Tallent said. ‘You take a strangler. Give him reason. Put a knife in his hand. What does he do?’

‘Well, I don’t know, sir,’ Stout said. ‘It was just an impression.’

Grey walked in jauntily. He glanced around at the steaming raincoats, Tallent’s unshod feet.

‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘It’s raining out there. Or maybe you just got back from a sewer.’

‘Sit,’ Tallent said. ‘You’re losing, boy. Trouble’s nudging in on you fast.’

‘I keep throwing fits,’ Grey said, sitting. ‘I think maybe I left a tap running at home.’

‘Sure you did,’ Tallent said. ‘She wears skirts.’

‘In here, never a dull one,’ Grey said.

He smiled at Gently.

‘Grey,’ Gently said. ‘I seem to recall you have a good memory.’

‘It works on cigarettes,’ Grey said. ‘And incidentally, I prefer Player’s.’

Tallent tossed him a cigarette. Grey lit it. He blew smoke towards the ceiling.

‘I’m remembering,’ he said. ‘Let me help you.’

‘I want you to remember April the twenty-second,’ Gently said.

Grey puffed a while. He kept looking at Gently.

‘Why the twenty-second?’ he said.

‘It’s a date I have,’ Gently said. ‘What were you doing on that date?’

Grey puffed some more.

‘It’s so sudden,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you could give me the day of the week.’

‘Certainly,’ Gently said. ‘It was a Saturday. The office would be closed. Where were you?’

Grey kept puffing.

‘No good,’ he said. ‘I just don’t seem to recall that Saturday. If it had been Easter, now, something like that. Maybe I took the wife racing.’

Gently shook his head.

‘No?’ Grey said. ‘Could be we were up shopping.’

‘Could be she was,’ Gently said.

‘Could it?’ Grey said.

He held in smoke.

‘It’s coming to me,’ he said.

‘Good,’ Gently said.

‘I like to help,’ Grey said. ‘I remember a Saturday, maybe that Saturday, when I went up town to buy shirts.’

‘Without your wife.’

‘Seems so,’ Grey said. ‘Maybe she took a fit, came later. But I went up alone, ate lunch there, came back without seeing her.’

‘Came back alone?’

Grey puffed twice.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Being honest. I met a broad from the Coconut Grove and gave her a lift back to Brickfields.’

‘Keep being honest,’ Gently said.

Grey shrugged. ‘So I nearly lied about it,’ he said. ‘Why not? It can’t be anything to you. Maybe I laid her. What then?’

Gently said nothing.

‘Now you’ll want to know her name,’ Grey said. ‘That’s what this is leading up to. You’ve maybe got an idea that a broad killed Tommy, maybe a broad I was going round with. That it?’

Gently kept silent.

‘Yes, that’s it,’ Grey said. ‘You’ve talked to my wife, that’s pretty obvious, and she’s filled you in with a few theories. But she’s a liar, of course. You know that? You’d better double-check anything she says. Another thing: she can’t tell one black person from another. Identification by her means nothing.’

‘But you agree you were out with a black woman that day?’

Grey puffed quickly.

‘Didn’t I say so?’

‘So if your wife said that she told the truth?’

‘Maybe. Only she wouldn’t know which girl I was with.’

‘She knows one black woman,’ Gently said.

‘She does?’

Grey’s eyes were suddenly sharp. Then he laughed.

‘I was forgetting. She met Sadie. Tommy had her with him a couple of times. Did she say it was Sadie?’

Gently watched him.

‘That’s hardly likely, is it?’ Grey said. ‘Sadie was Tommy’s girl, she didn’t play around. He paid too many bills for her to cheat on him. Does Eileen say that?’

Gently’s face was blank.

‘So she does,’ Grey said. ‘Bless her. I’ll bet she only saw that girl’s bonnet, and she swore blind it was Sadie. And you tumbling over yourself to believe that, because Eileen had already told you about Tommy and me. So’s now I’m lined up for conspiracy with Sadie. Big deal. Bouquet for Eileen.’

He stabbed out the cigarette.

‘Try Ozzie,’ he said. ‘Ozzie went out with her.’

‘But you had the alibi,’ Gently said.

‘That’s right,’ Grey said. ‘Why am I grieving? None of this crap will stand up in court. Even Eileen couldn’t louse up my alibi. So have it your way. Say it was Sadie. Give yourself a ball with that.’

‘Was it Sadie?’

‘Why not?’

‘She was your girl-friend as well as Blackburn’s?’

‘Anything,’ Grey said. ‘You want to think so. There’s no harm in it. Keep thinking.’

‘And she killed Blackburn?’

‘Sure,’ Grey said.

‘And warned you when?’

‘She warned me when. And then I went out and got an alibi, and that’s the hard part. I’m fire-proof.’

‘Not if this goes into a statement,’ Gently said.

Grey laughed. ‘There isn’t going to be a statement,’ he said. ‘I’m just playing along. This is your suggestion. But you can’t prove anything except the alibi.’

‘Suppose I could,’ Gently said.

Grey’s eyes were sharp again for a moment.

‘Suppose you were heard offering incitement,’ Gently said. ‘And add to that a planned alibi.’

Grey hesitated, said, ‘Have you talked to Sadie?’

Gently watched, said nothing.

Grey took some breaths.

‘So be clever,’ he said. ‘I don’t scare like Ozzie does. I know where I stand. So does my lawyer. Out of this one I walk away.’

‘That must comfort you,’ Gently said.

‘It does,’ Grey said. ‘Do I go?’

‘Wait,’ Gently said. ‘I’ve a message from your wife. She asked me to tell you that she knows.’

‘Great,’ Grey said. ‘She knows what?’

‘You can go,’ Gently said.

Grey paused, looking at Gently, then got to his feet and was marched out.

‘And for me, that’s it,’ Tallent said, when the door closed behind Grey. ‘He was backhanding it, the louse, but he was giving it just the way it happened. He triggered that killing.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Makin said. ‘That was my impression too. He knew you were on to him, but he didn’t know how far, so he kept spelling it out to see how you’d take it.’

‘He triggered it,’ Tallent said. ‘Through Sadie he did it. Who her partner was doesn’t matter. It could have been Sharkey or Taylor or Osgood, or Sadie by herself. But Grey triggered it!’

‘Not Sadie by herself, sir,’ Stout said.

‘For once,’ Tallent said, ‘I go with you, sonny.’

Makin pointed to a copy of the Immigration Department’s lists that lay in Tallent’s in-tray.

‘I make Sharkey the favourite, sir,’ he said. ‘Since that turned up I can’t see it otherwise.’

Gently hunched over his pipe, let smoke rise in small rings.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Now we need Sadie. Most of the rest of it is explained.’

‘She perhaps won’t talk,’ Tallent said.

Gently smiled. ‘She doesn’t have to talk. Whether she opens her mouth or keeps it closed she is going to condemn the killer for us.’

‘Yeah?’ Tallent said. ‘How’s that?’

Gently puffed, said, ‘We’re pretty sure of the killer. How Sadie reacts, it doesn’t matter how, must fill the blank in the equation. We need her next. We’ll upgrade our signal. If she’s alive we have to have her.’

Tallent stroked his knuckles.

‘If she’s alive?’

‘That’s always an open question,’ Gently shrugged. ‘From the murderer’s point of view she’s better dead, and there’s been a big silence about her up till now.’

‘Yeah,’ Tallent said. ‘Big silence.’

‘For the rest, we need to tie up some details,’ Gently said. ‘I’d like Stout to finish checking out Grey’s alibi, and you and Makin to backtrack on your questioning this afternoon. With reference to Sadie, Grey and Osgood, and anything you can pick up on Grey’s movements yesterday.’

‘Hell,’ Tallent said. ‘You don’t think he killed Sadie?’

‘Then we’ll need the other bereaved relatives on the Immigration Department list checked,’ Gently said. ‘If they have friends or connections this way, if they were away from home on Tuesday. When that’s done’ – he grinned at Tallent – ‘you can knock off and get yourself a night’s rest.’

‘Oh thanks,’ Tallent said. ‘I did wonder about that, like if it figured in the routine where you come from.’

Gently blew rings.

‘I’m spending the evening out,’ he said. ‘Music, dance, bright lights. I want to hear Sharkey sing his calypso. Study night-life out of town.’

Tallent stared.

‘You going there alone, sir?’

‘Blackburn did,’ Gently said. ‘Grey, Osgood.’

‘Yeah, but Blackburn’s in the morgue, sir,’ Tallent said.

‘Coincidence,’ Gently said.

Tallent said nothing.

A
T
8
P.M. IT
still rained, a cold sweat out of the darkness. Street-light reflections aimed daggers along the narrow Brickfields streets. Mostly the streets were deserted, but here and there loped a black figure, long-limbed, padded-shouldered, dripping trilby slanted forward.

Paradise Street wore a new aspect. At the top end the club’s sign burned red and blue. The street surface receded glimmering towards it between lines of lightless parked cars. The cars were mostly old and decrepit and jazzed with paint and stick-on labels. Several were bumperless and without grilles and only a few retained their hub-caps.

Gently drove through the lines and parked bumpers-on to Sharkey’s red Consul. He waited. A big-shouldered black man came out of the vestibule and down the steps. He came to a stand, eye-whites showing, taking in Gently, the car. Gently dropping his window. The man ambled up to him. He pushed his face close to the window.

‘Man,’ he said. ‘You just knows you cain’t park any place round here.’

‘Oh yes, I think so,’ Gently said. ‘I’ll leave it unlocked with the keys in it.’

The man gaped.

‘You do that,’ he said, ‘and they’ll be selling her in Glasgow some place tomorrow. Who you man – what you want? This only for black people round here.’

Gently got out, raised the window, closed the door, held out the keys.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘You take them. That way we’ll know the car is safe.’

The man jerked his hand away.

‘No, sir!’ he said. ‘You just get back in that car and drive away.’