Gently Sinking (2 page)

The AC drew breath. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You probably pass. But I had to find out. Race relations is something the best of us slip on, and there isn’t room for slipping here.’

He resumed his glasses, settling them in place with a quick, decided movement. Gently flickered the pages of his file. The tug gave two more reproachful toots.

‘May I ask a question?’

‘Of course.’

‘Is it a conviction I’m after?’

The AC stared.

‘It just seemed to me there was a way out,’ Gently said. ‘Chummie goes back quietly on a quick ship to Jamaica. No case, no trial. No headlines. No casualties.’

The AC closed his eyes. ‘Tempting,’ he said. ‘But not for us. Handle it that way, and you’re inviting every disgruntled illegal immigrant to use a knife.’

‘It may come to that. Lack of evidence.’

The AC opened his eyes with a bang. ‘There’d better be evidence, Gently,’ he said. ‘You asked a question. I’m answering it.’

‘The hard way.’

‘Yes.’

Gently shrugged, rose with his file. ‘I’m the fool, then. I’ll get over there and make motions like rushing in.’

‘Wait,’ the AC said.

Gently stopped.

‘Two things. One is they’ve pulled in Blackburn’s partners. Blackburn kept records hidden in his flat, and they implicate Osgood and Grey. Offences contravening the Immigration Act. They’re holding them on remand at Chiswick. That happened last night, not in the file. Other thing . . .’

His glasses dipped again. He looked steadily at Gently’s blank face.

‘Sorry it had to be you,’ he said. ‘If it blows up, I’m behind you.’

The rain was continuing, delicate, indefinite. Gently drove through it in his new Sceptre with its gold coach-line and crimped wheels. Along Cannon Street, round St Paul’s, into Newgate Street and up West: the car soothing him with its polite potential and aura of current trend. At Divisional HQ he learned the officer i/c the case was at Blackburn’s flat in Calonne Road. He drove to Calonne Road, wipers stroking all the way.

Calonne Road was a pleasant street lined with plane trees that were beginning to shed. One side was terraced; the houses were late Victorian, ornately architected in yellow brick. Blackburn had lived at 72, a detached house with stone-framed bays. It had a massive portico. In the macadamized forecourt stood a black Super Snipe and a dark blue Viva.

Gently parked and went in. A constable on the door directed him upstairs. The hall of the house had been reconstructed to give separate entries to four flats. Blackburn’s flat was on the first floor and had the landing enclosed to form a vestibule.

Inside Gently found three men engaged in a very thorough search. One of them, tall, heavy-framed, jumped up from the floor as Gently entered.

‘Chief Inspector Tallent?’

‘That’s me, sir.’

He was an officer Gently didn’t know, a youngish man with small, pale eyes and a white stripe in his brown hair.

They shook hands. Tallent introduced him to the members of his team: Inspector Makin, sad-faced, balding, and a good-looking youngster named Stout.

‘Found anything fresh?’

‘ ’Fraid not, sir. But I thought it was worth a try. You’ll have heard what we found yesterday. The devil had hidden it pretty well.’

Stripey, they’d call him, behind his back, though certainly nowhere else. Tallent was mean-mouthed, hard-voiced, had the fists of a boxer.

Proudly he revealed to Gently a section of skirting-board that tipped outward to reveal a wall-safe.

No doubt a good cop, but a tough one. The wrong man here.

‘Blackburn lived alone?’

Gently moved about the dishevelled room. It was the lounge. Good, modern furniture, wall-lighting, deep carpet. An expensive radiogram. A pile of LPs with ‘Sergeant Pepper’ on top. In a divider-bookcase reference-, year-books and a balance of sensational paperbacks.

‘Yes, sir. It was his daily help found him.’

‘Neighbours know anything?’

‘Nobody heard it. The flat below here is empty.’

‘See any visitors?’

‘No, sir. But there’s an outside stairway to the garden. Back of the garden is a service road. You don’t need to enter by the front door.’

‘Who last saw him alive?’

‘A tenant called Baker. Has the other flat downstairs. He saw Blackburn come in around 9.30 p.m. According to the post-mortem he was dead by about 10.’

‘You checked Blackburn’s office.’

‘We checked. He left there about 4.’

‘And in between?’

‘Don’t know, sir. Report says he’d eaten a meal.’

Gently had seen Blackburn’s photograph and had read his dossier in the file. Age forty, he’d been a handsome man with dark, curling hair and dark eyes. He came from Yorkshire, and his family lived there. He’d worked for a shipping company in Hull. Five years ago he’d moved to London and set up office in Poplar. No record. The legitimate side of his business was quite profitable.

‘He’d been with a woman. Nobody saw her?’

‘Seems not,’ Tallent said. ‘From what people say he was pretty cautious about the way he had visitors. They’ve heard them talking, laughing in here, playing music, romping around, but never seen them come and go. Must have always used the back way.’

‘You’ll have talked to Osgood and Grey?’

‘Yes, sir. They’re playing it close.’

‘What about the office staff?’

‘A clerk and a typist, sir. Nothing there.’

‘Let’s see some more of this flat.’

Tallent pushed open a door to reveal the bedroom. The double bed on which the body had been found had been stripped and the bedding removed. Here too the furniture was expensive. An elaborate bed-head was upholstered in white leather. A matching dressing-table, occupying one wall, had multiple mirrors and its own lighting. A fitted wardrobe held costly clothes. Shirts in the tallboy were hand-made. The windows, one of the front bays, were heavily curtained in blue velvet.

Gently sniffed. ‘Any women’s clothes?’

‘No, sir. That I particularly looked for.’

‘Nevertheless . . .’

They could all smell it, a faint, staling, feminine perfume.

Tallent pointed to the dressing-table. ‘Looks like he was fond of eau-de-Cologne, sir.’

Gently shook his head. ‘Not eau-de-Cologne. Whatever it was cost more than that.’

‘Something the woman wore?’

‘Perhaps. But she’d need to have been here more than once.’

‘Like she was his regular.’

‘Yes . . . regular. That dressing-table isn’t exactly masculine.’

He went to the wardrobe. Beside the stock of clothes were six, eight empty hangers. Two of the fitted drawers were empty. In the tallboy, two more.

Tallent gave a low whistle. ‘I ought to have spotted that,’ he said. ‘So she was living here.’

Gently shrugged. ‘More likely commuting, or she’d have been spotted. What do the dabs tell us?’

Tallent looked at Makin.

‘Several dabs of another person,’ Makin said. ‘Scattered about. Mostly in here. One or two in the kitchen.’

‘Not on record?’

‘No, sir.’

‘With us – or the Immigration Department?’

‘I—’ Makin’s incipient jowls flushed. ‘Didn’t try them, sir,’ he admitted.

‘Blast,’ Tallent said. He gave Makin a look that promised no sweetness for the future. ‘Bloody obvious, isn’t it, when you come to think. A black woman. It has to be.’

‘A black woman,’ Gently said. ‘Of course, she may not be on record. May not necessarily be black. But we’ll check right away.’

Tallent leered at Makin, who left hastily. Soon they heard the Viva start below. Tallent took out cigarettes, offered them to Gently, lit one, dragged smoke thirstily.

‘A black girl,’ he said. ‘You get the picture. I’d say he was asking for it, messing with them. Do you reckon she did it – or just set him up, then whistled the boyo in with his knife?’

‘She could have done it,’ Gently said flatly.

‘Yeah,’ Tallent said, his eyes imagining it. ‘But in the back – you think of that. Was he surprised? Was he sent?’

‘Perhaps she wasn’t in on it, sir,’ Stout suggested. ‘We don’t know for a fact she was.’

‘Likely,’ Tallent said. ‘He was still naked. You think he hung around that way all evening?’

‘How were his clothes left?’ Gently asked.

‘Stacked on the chair by the bed. Pretty neat. Trousers folded. He’d slipped out of the shirt quick, didn’t undo the cuff-links.’

‘And the bedclothes?’

‘Quilt on the floor, the rest mussed up but not turned back. They didn’t get in it. Guess he was impatient. Quite a bit of blood soaked through.’

He sieved out smoke.

‘Any luck with the knife?’

‘Not yet. Too many of that sort around. We’re checking the manor, but everyone sells them. Fifty per cent go to immigrants.’

‘Just the cheapest sort of job, sir,’ Stout put in. ‘Even toy-shops, newsagents stock them.’

They moved out of the bedroom. Everywhere in the flat you had the sensation of time standing still, as though these rooms had died too when Blackburn’s life was snuffed out. Suddenly their meaning had been arrested. Dead rooms, dead furniture. A bottle of milk in the kitchen had curdled. A calendar still showed the 17th.

‘These are the steps down,’ Tallent said, opening a door in the kitchen.

At the back of the house was a strip of garden with, at the bottom, a huge horse-chestnut. A garden on the right was vivid with dahlias, on the left apples dripped among sodden leaves. Blackburn’s steps were a fire-escape, doubtless added before the house was converted. Near the foot was an iron gate. It gave access to a footway between a wall and a wooden fence.

‘Leads to the service road at the back.’

That way Blackburn’s killer had come.

‘You’ve searched that area?’

‘We searched. Blackburn’s dabs on the gate, the stair-rail.’

The service road was unlit. Soon after six it would be dark down there, with only light from uncurtained windows to show how dark the darkness was. On the kitchen door a Yale lock, easily sprung with a thin knife-blade.

‘Give me some background,’ Gently said. ‘You’ll have had time to get on to it by now. Who did he know? Where did he eat? What pub did he go to?’

Tallent shuffled a brogued foot. ‘That’s just what we haven’t got on to,’ he said. ‘Seems he didn’t pal up with his neighbours, have friends. He was a loner. He looked in the office most days, but they were only working this one ship. He’d go up Soho some place to lunch. Sometimes he’d meet his partners in the evening. They’d go to a show, eat out, maybe chat up some birds in a pub. Then he’d come home, alone. He never brought the other two here.’

‘That leaves gaps,’ Gently said.

‘Yeah,’ Tallent frowned. ‘When he didn’t go to shows. Maybe his black bird took up his time. Perhaps we’ll fill in the blanks later.’

‘You’ve been questioning immigrants?’

‘Oh sure. We’ve got our quota round here.’

‘And?’

Tallent blew a raspberry with cigarette-smoke. ‘You know how the black community clams up. Push them hard and they give you the silent treatment. No dice. We’re still trying.’

‘I don’t think they know anything, sir,’ Stout said. ‘I’ve got contacts with the local immigrants. They’re pretty scared. They know we’re gunning for them. My impression is that chummie comes from elsewhere.’

Tallent blew smoke.

‘Still background,’ Gently said. ‘How much was Blackburn worth when he died?’

‘Plenty,’ Tallent said. ‘It’s in three accounts, and notes stashed away in deposit boxes. We got all that from his hideyhole. It adds up to eleven, twelve thou. There was a wad of three hundred, along with the papers and twenty-fivers in his wallet. They were charging the illegals two-fifty a trip, out of which Blackburn was netting one hundred. Then they hit them for another hundred later when they started regular work. Average twenty clients a month the year round. Tax free.’

‘For five years,’ Gently said.

‘The last big spender,’ Tallent said. ‘Perhaps there’s more stashed away. That’s why I’m taking the flat apart. He was also getting payments from some source not identified in the record, a matter of two, three hundred a month. Hardly worth him sending round for.’

‘Any sign of a search?’

‘No,’ Tallent said. ‘Nor they didn’t touch his wallet.’

‘His partners don’t stand to collect?’

‘Not any way we can figure yet.’ Tallent hissed smoke at the ceiling. ‘I’ve been working that angle, sir,’ he said. ‘I wanted it cleared out of the way. I buzzed Sheffield, asked them to make discreet inquiries about Blackburn’s family. There’s just his father, age seventy, and he hasn’t been away from Sheffield for years.’

‘A shock for the old man,’ Gently said.

‘Yeah,’ Tallent said. ‘But gilt-edged. And that answers that. Blackburn wasn’t put away for his money.’

‘Leaving revenge-murder.’

‘As you say, sir.’

‘By illegals.’

‘By illegals.’

Tallent ground out his cigarette-butt, making the tobacco-shreds spill around.

‘What I aim to do now, sir,’ he said, ‘is put some pressure on Osgood and Grey. They have to know more than they’ve been saying, and maybe the cells will have loosened their tongues.’

Gently nodded slowly. ‘I’ll sit in on that.’

Tallent closed the door on the garden. Stout switched off lights. The sudden dimness filled the flat with heavy, unexpected shadows.

As they went out to the cars Gently felt Tallent touch his arm. On the other side of the street a black man was passing. He felt their eyes on him, ducked his head, made his step a shuffle.

Tallent stood rigid, watching.

‘Yeah,’ he murmured. ‘Yeah. Yeah.’

D
IVISIONAL HQ WAS
a fussy Edwardian building faced at ground-floor level with glazed brown brick. Perhaps because of this the round-arched entrance seemed to belong to a public lavatory. Some half-hearted modernization had replaced hanging lamps with fluorescent strip, but in effect this had made more emphatic the inherent gloominess of the rooms. Old-fashioned central-heating, employing massive radiators, produced a temperature that was almost unbearable.

Tallent’s office was at the back, overlooking a courtyard used by M/T. He ordered coffee to be sent in and found a comfortable chair from somewhere for Gently. His office was exceedingly tidy and the buff lino fat with polish.