Hide My Eyes (16 page)

“Briefly.” Gerry’s wry smile suggested youthful false steps safely retraced. “I never saw the house or the old people again, though. My God, what an atmosphere to drag up an orphan child in. I can see that place now,” he added with a flash of pure sincerity which completely transformed him. “Suppressed dirt, suppressed starvation, and a soul-chilling atmosphere of superiority to the rest of the ignorant herd.”

“Huh,” said the manager. “Everybody knew that they could sell ’im at one end of the street and buy ’im at the other. Silly old clod,” he added with a flicker of resentment still alive after twenty years. “He had a lower intelligence than most.”

“Oh no, he was a very brilliant man. I think you really must grant him that.” The man in the trench coat made the statement with a conviction not only out of character but clearly misplaced. The effect was conventionally shocking, as if he had put a straw in his hair suddenly. “Quite, quite brilliant,” he repeated with a fleeting smile of contented superiority which made everybody in the room, including the drunken barber, vaguely uncomfortable. The revelation was no more than a glimpse. Immediately afterwards he was
his
usual sophisticated and charming self. “It was no home for a kid, anyway,” he said.

“I should say.” The manager wagged his head again. “No one blamed you for going. The old girl told a lot of lies, I believe,” he added slyly.

“What about? What sort of lies?” The questions came very sharply and the manager coloured.

“Just what you’d expect,” he muttered. “I wouldn’t have blamed you, mind you, if you had helped yourself to something to go on with. They’d made your home impossible, I mean to say.”

“Lies, of course.” Gerry’s dignity was pitying. He seemed to be a different person altogether when on the subject of his childhood. “Poor woman, I think her life may have been difficult. She wasn’t clever, you know.”

“Look at the time, Major, look at the time!” Mr. Vick went off like an alarm clock himself. He was pointing at the bold-faced clock over the door and was in imminent danger of falling off his stool.

Gerry burst out laughing and exchanged amused glances with his newly-found oldest friend.

“Take care of him until I come back,” he said. “I just want a word with someone in the theatre. I shan’t be ten minutes.”

“I’d like to see old Moggie and old Moggie’d like to see me,” said Mr. Vick, emerging into the open after the bait which had been dangled before him all the evening.

“I doubt it.” Again the childhood friends exchanged glances and as Gerry went out of the back door nearest to the theatre the manager’s soothing voice reached him as it addressed Mr. Vick.

“If you’ve been on sherry since opening time, sir, I wonder if you’d like a change? What about a nice Fernet Branca cocktail?”

The man in the trench coat walked swiftly down the pavement, avoiding the stage door in the blank wall of the theatre. There was a contented smile on his lips. “Since opening time.” The words were so satisfactory that he repeated them aloud. It was the point he had been trying to establish all
the
evening and now that it had been done, and he had a new alibi in place of the other which had gone astray, he felt infinitely happier even though he was quite confident he would not need to use it.

Perhaps if his attitude to the precaution had been less superstitious and more practical it might have occurred to him that two alibis for the same vital quarter of an hour, one in Richard’s mind and one in Mr. Vick’s, might be more dangerous than none at all. That realisation came some minutes later.

Crossing the main street he turned into one of those small eating houses which seem always to be built on the same rectangular plan. They possess two short counters set one on either side of a narrow entrance, and a passage between leading into a square steam-filled room where plastic-topped tables are surrounded by quantities of spiky bent-wood chairs. This was a poor place with shabby painted walls and dusty light bulbs, and the single waitress, a pallid flat-chested youngster, was only too obviously the daughter of the grim old lady at the urns. A group of seedy looking youths who might have been planning anything from a burglary to a skiffle group sat round the largest table in the far corner talking together, and did not look up as he came in. The rest of the room was empty.

He chose a small table under the ledge of the right-hand counter. It placed him in a corner diagonally opposite the whispering group, and as he edged round to get the angle behind him the bunched skirts of his trench coat scattered the lightweight chairs. Beneath the coat the pockets of his ragged jacket were heavy and he frowned as he sat down. The chance meeting with Mr. Vick had upset the whole exercise. He was carrying far too much incriminating stuff for complete safety and the wooden box was still in the car.

Yet he was by no means panic-stricken. His attitude was far more dangerous than that. He felt impersonal, almost as if his whole interest in the matter was academic.

There was a wireless set turned low on the counter and as he sat down he heard the chimes of Big Ben heralding the
news
. He ordered coffee and sat there sipping it while the prim voice of the B.B.C. announcer went through the happenings of the day.

There was no police message, no mention of a West End Crime.

Presently he pushed his cup away and drew out the black wallet which he had taken from Matt Phillipson’s body. It lay plump and neat in his hands, where it looked unremarkable. By far its greatest bulk consisted of a cheque book, he noticed with mild regret, of no use to anybody now. But in the opposite pocket there was a reasonable wad of pound notes and a couple of fivers tucked among all the usual miscellany. It was when he was looking to see if there were any more that he discovered the two letters, clipped together and kept there for safety away from secretaries as Mr. Phillipson had promised Polly. Gerry recognised her familiar sprawling handwriting and a flood of tingling blood rose up from his stomach to suffuse his face.

Apprehension, breath taking and terrible as anything in his childhood, took possession of him and he spread the sheets out with hands that trembled.

There it was, clear and irrevocable, in words which could have come from no one else.

“… the money doesn’t matter but you must tell him, dear. Make it clear how wrong and how
dangerous
it is, but leave me out. Once he knows I know, the mischief will be done as he’ll be afraid and keep away and there’ll be no one to keep an eye on him …”

The coarse skin on the lined forehead was damp. Gerry hardly dared to read the second letter. As he turned to it the nerves in his face contracted into a net of pain, and the blood in his heart felt icy.

“… Thank you, Matt, what a dear old sport you are. Thursday night, then. I’ll be thinking of you both. If you can just give him a good fright it may pull him right up and make him see sense. He’s all right when you know him, one of the best. Give me a ring afterwards or better still come in and see me. Love, Polly.”

The man in the trench coat sat looking at the trembling
sheet
. She knew. She knew of the appointment and would know therefore of everything else.

With the realisation, the odd hypothetical quality in his appreciation of events left him suddenly and gave place to stark vision, a difference as great as between sleeping and waking. For the first time he saw his two alibis for what they were, two over-elaborate sums cancelling each other out.

Gradually he became aware of a shadow and looking up saw the little waitress standing close before him.

She was spreading out her elbows in an attempt to shield him with her thin body from any chance glance from the other table. She was very young, her black dress very poor, and the little gold cross on the thin chain round her neck very small. Her circular eyes were black, too, and shyly reproachful as she looked from his face to the table before him.

Glancing down, he saw that he had forgotten the wallet. It lay wide open before him, the money exposed.

“Put it away,” she said softly, “you’re drunk, aren’t you?”

He pulled himself together at once and his charm lit up his face like a lamp.

“Bless you,” he said, quickly, gathering up the notes and thrusting them into his breast. “I’m sorry. I was reading a letter. It’s a bit of a knock-out … from a woman.”

The little face, pale-skinned and muddy, flushed with sly amusement as she attempted badinage.

“She’s found you out, has she?”

He shivered and the sudden glimpse of helplessness appearing in his face thrilled her.

“It seems so.”

“I see. Well, you’ll have to do something about her, won’t you?”

For a time he stared at her in open horror, silent as the full implication of the words sank in. Then:

“Yes,” he said slowly. “Yes, I shall.”

Chapter 13

SOMEONE AT HOME

“IF YOU DON’T
know where the shed is I can’t show you. ’E’s got no business coming in at night at all, let alone sending down strangers. There’s a lot of valuable property standing about ’ere, though you might not think so.”

The nightwatchman at Rolf’s Dump was still a voice in the dark so far as Richard was concerned, although by now he was standing only a few feet away from him. Here in the Dump the moonlight had created a world of ink and silver with no half tones. The watchman was lost in a black wall rising up into the sky, but the dog, a white terrier, smooth-skinned and shivering, sat visible in the path, presumably at his master’s feet.

Richard took two coins silently from his pocket and let the light fall upon their broad silver faces. There was no response. The voice continued to grumble.

“I’ve ’ad plenty of trouble down ’ere already tonight,” it said. “The police ’ave been ’ere all day over on the other side of the estate. They’ve still got the key of the foot-gate in Tooley Street. Did you notice them as you came past?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t. Where would they be?”

“Over ’ere be’ind me, about three-quarters of a mile back, against the ’oarding.”

“No. I didn’t see anybody.”

“They’ve gorn then. Good job. There’s nothing more nosey than the police. As for the public, they’re interfering, gabby, can’t keep their traps shut. You would think a gang of labourers could load a ton or two of empty oil drums on to a barge without interfering with what they found be’ind them, wouldn’t you?”

“What did they find?” Richard felt in his pocket for a third coin. Again there was no movement as he displayed it,
but
as he placed it with the others the chink sounded and response was immediate.

“I don’t know if you can see me setting ’ere, sir.” The voice was many shades warmer. “Wait, just a minute.” There was a scuffle and a bright light appeared, revealing a little old man sitting on a kitchen chair in a sentry-box of a shelter built into the hillock which was entirely composed of old wooden wheels. He was wrapped in an assortment of coats topped by a sleeveless leather jerkin belted with a piece of cord, and from under the peak of his cap, which he wore pulled down far on his head, a pair of spectacles with the thickest of lenses peered at Richard hopefully.

The young man offered him the money and almost dropped it. The hand which came out so eagerly missed his own and there was a moment of confusion before the coins were safely transferred. The man was virtually blind and not admitting it, a discovery which explained a great deal.

“It was because the engine was all right, you see, sir.” Having stowed away his seven-and-six the old man became a friend and his tone was confidential.

“The engine,” said Richard, completely at sea.

“The engine of the ’bus, sir. It went, that’s what surprised everybody. It started up at once, although it had been there for three years they say and couldn’t nohow have been moved since last spring because of the oil drums being right in the way, you see. They were put there in the spring.”

Richard did not understand in the least. The entire statement struck him as a
non sequitur
. He did not say so but his silence wss expressive and, aware of his lack of success, the nightwatchman tried again.

“It was the loaders what found it out,” he said hoarsely. “They was nosin’ about yesterday after they shifted the drums and they saw that seven old ’buses had been hemmed in behind this load they was movin’. They over’auled them, seein’ what they could pinch I’ll bet, and one was perfectly all right. When they went to lunch they ’ad to talk about it in the boozer, someone ’eard them and re-ported them, and before anybody knows what’s ’appenin’ the rozzers comes sniffin’ in. That’s what democracy ’as come to. One word in
a
pub and down come the flippin’ police anxious not to miss anything useful. We’re a nation o’ scroungers.”

The information contained in this piece of involved thinking was of little interest to Richard who was no reader of murder cases and was unaware of any police search for a ’bus. His interest was solely in Gerry.

“Does Mr. Hawker work here?” he enquired at last.

“Only in ’is shed, private like. ’E don’t own anythin’ stored ’ere.”

“I see. He rents a workshop here?”

“That’s about it. A little workshop. ’E tunes up racin’ cars down ’ere, or limousines.” The watchman sounded admiring but vague and it occurred to Richard, who had become something of an authority on the subject, that Gerry must have been talking again. Since the nightwatchman had not the evidence of his own eyes, his information could only come from one source.

“Is he often here?” he enquired.

“On and off. Sometimes ’e works ’ere at night for a week. O’ course I’m only ’ere at night meself. I couldn’t say what ’e does in the daytime. I thought you was a friend of ’is?”

“Well, I’ve just spent the day with him.”

“Oh.” The reassurance seemed sufficient. “Well, ’e always ’as a word with me when ’e comes in late. Two years now I’ve ’ad this job and ’e’s always been very nice when he troubles me to open up for ’im. Reelly very nice.” The coins clinked softly in his pocket, an accompaniment to praise. “Very nice indeed. ’E’s a feller you can take to, ain’t ’e? Always the same, I say, always the same.”