Last Detective (6 page)

‘Glad you could make it,' remarked Yardbird caustically. ‘Searched everywhere for you yesterday. Where were you? At the pictures?'

‘Inquiries, sir,' said Davies.

Yardbird sniffed. ‘Well, I've got some further inquiries for you. And this is bigger stuff than you've been asked to handle before. Much bigger. It seems to me you've been rather falling behind in the general run of things, Davies.'

There was nothing but for him to agree. ‘Yes, sir,' he answered. ‘I've had that feeling myself. I thought I was being, sort of, overlooked.'

Yardbird sat on the edge of his desk. His left foot just reached the floor. He thought he caught a movement from the window of the girl students' hostel and he tried to get a firmer look without Davies noticing.

‘Hah,' smiled Davies amiably. ‘Do those girls still live across there, sir?'

Yardbird spun so quickly he all but spilled from the desk. ‘Girls? For Christ's sake, which girls?' He turned and sat down behind the desk, and, without being asked, Davies sat pensively in the visitor's chair. The Inspector rubbed his face in his hands. ‘I don't know, Davies,' he grumbled. ‘I really don't know. I consider you for a big job, but I honestly can't tell whether I'm doing either of us a favour. I still can't get the police garden party out of my mind. Those fucking raffle tickets blowing all over the show. And when you'd got back from collecting them somebody had nicked the raffle money.'

‘I was a poor choice for the raffle, the wrong man,' admitted Davies. ‘It seemed to go from bad to worse, didn't it.'

‘The Commissioner thought you were some kind of clown we had hired. I might as well tell you that here and now, Davies. It made me feel pretty stupid I can tell you.' He sighed and thrust his broad chin into his broader tunic. ‘On the other hand I was always one for giving somebody another chance. And that's what I'm offering you. Another chance. Did you look through the Ramscar file last night when you came in?'

‘Yes, I did, sir.'

‘Nasty bugger that,' muttered Yardbird. ‘He's been around ever since I was a young constable in this division. A finger in every criminal pie, a real villain. Larceny, grievous bodily harm, vice, protection rackets, all sorts of things. And very active in the old London gang wars. Mr Ramscar's put bullets through a few kneecaps I can tell you.'

‘He's got a big file, sir,' agreed Davies. ‘What's he done this time?'

‘Nothing,' replied Yardbird. ‘Nothing that our splendid Special Branch can prove. And it's them that wants him. They just know he's back in London from abroad, where he's been involved in some big villainy and they think he's come back for a good reason. They think he might be up to political crime now. He likes to keep in the trend. Anyway they want him found but they don't want to set an army looking for him. They just want somebody to track him down. And you're the somebody. Because they think he's come home. He's in this area. You find him.'

‘I see. Find him.'

‘That's it. Get around his old haunts and his old friends. Ask a lot of questions. We don't mind too much if he starts flapping his wings. I'm going to detach you from other duties. Just see I get regular reports. It shouldn't take you long, a couple of weeks at the most.'

‘Yes,' said Davies. ‘I see.'

Yardbird looked up. It was time for Davies to go.

‘Anything else?' asked the Inspector. ‘You've got the whole picture, now.'

‘No…No, nothing else, sir. Just one thing. Can I use my own transport? My car?'

Yardbird, who had never seen Davies's Lagonda or the dog, nodded brusquely. ‘If it's decent. If it doesn't let down the force. And…Davies.'

‘Yes sir.'

‘Keep the expenses down. If you have to go to the West End go by bus. And not too much boozing in those clubs. Remember, you're not in the Flying Squad.'

Davies thanked him and went out, down the stairs and into the CID room. A detective sergeant called Myer was going through three hundred pornographic pictures. Two other CID men, looking over his shoulder, examined them for clues. Davies got the Ramscar file and sat down to go through it again. He came to the Celia Norris statement and read it minutely. He took a deep breath and plunged into the rest of the history. But in his mind he could see only a girl with a blob of ice-cream on her chin.

Davies had few notions about locating Ramscar. It appeared obvious that if he were in hiding he would hardly visit his once habitual haunts, although he would undoubtedly contact old associates. Davies thought if he walked about loudly enough and asked a great many random questions then Ramscar might come to him.

In the afternoon he went to Park Royal greyhound races and backed four spectacularly losing dogs, one at evens. He made conversations with a number of shifty men, mentioning Ramscar and showing his picture but it appeared to mean nothing. In the toilet he approached a fellow urinator and waved the photograph but the man, white-faced, retreated, still making water, and with a quaint leapfrogging motion along the troughs. As soon as he reached the door he ran and reported Davies to a policeman.

It was not at all a promising first day. At five o'clock he returned to the police station and, unable to help himself, almost mesmerized, he again, took down the file on Celia Norris. He kept looking over his shoulder experiencing the same sensations as when he had, as a boy, secretly examined the illustrations in ‘First Aid To The Injured', fearful that his mother would catch him enslaved by a drawing of a woman receiving artificial respiration. He felt contracted inside reading through the unfinished story again, looking at the photographs. He found himself making a stupid little movement with his hand trying to brush that nib of ice-cream from the laughing girl's chin. He reacted with horror when he realized what he was doing. Eventually, unable to help himself, he returned the file and very secretly went out and began to walk the 25-year-old trail of Celia Norris.

Although there had been demolitions and developments on the London fringe of the district, the area of the High Street and the canal were all but unchanged. The cemetery occupied a good many acres at the base of this region and that was as immovable as cemeteries generally are. The canal formed a wedge through the centre and provided another hard argument against change. On the far side the small workshops and bigger factories had been so busy making goods and money during the nineteen-fifties and sixties that few thought of making any improvements. Now they had slowed with the recession; those who operated them were unwilling to finance re-planning or expansion. The High Street, grey and crowded, ran roughly on the same line as the canal, although it curved quickly to cross the waterway at its uppermost end before the power station. It was locked between the immovable and the immutable. To the south the cemetery, to the north the power station, to the west the canal and to the east the solid, three-and four-storey houses of the original Victorian town, including ‘Bali Hi', Furtman Gardens (formerly called ‘Cranbrook Villa' but renamed after Mrs Fulljames had fallen in love with Rossano Brazzi in the film version of
South Pacific
). It would be half-a-century before anyone thought of pulling those down.

And so the stage remained largely as it was that close night in July, 1951, when Celia Norris began her cycle journey home from the youth club. It was now a gritty October evening. Davies left the police station and after courteously declining the offer of a free intercourse from Venus, the evening star, he set off on foot for St Fridewide's Catholic Church.

The youth club had been in the grounds of the church, indeed it still was, and the girl would have cycled from the main gate. He walked thoughtfully from there to the junction with the southern end of the High Street. The cemetery occupied about ten acres, fronting on the main road, at that point, all dead land. He went at a steady pace (he would cycle it, he decided, at some later time) but increased his step past the graveyard gates because he did not want to be forced into making an explanation to the miserable keeper about the misreading of the word ‘tomb' for ‘bomb'. The man was bound to be uncharitable. He should introduce him to Mrs Fulljames one day.

At the conclusion of the cemetery there was the customary stonemason's yard with a nice display of crosses and weepy angels, to catch the passing trade, and from this the haphazard High Street began its course. The smart, big, bright stores that grew up in the years of plenty, in the sixties, had found their home in other easier thoroughfares in Kilburn, Paddington and Cricklewood, leaving this street to the small grocers, the tobacconists, the fish-and-chip merchants, the humid cafés, the bright, cheap clothes shops, the betting shops, of course, and several long stretches occupied by the showrooms of second-hand car dealers, the vehicles and the salesmen smiling identical smiles from the open fronts of the premises.

The local newspaper, the
Citizen
, was uncomfortably accommodated in a house, once the residence of the neighbourhood's only famous son, Miles Shaltoe, a writer of somewhat dubious novels who enjoyed a vogue in the early nineteen hundreds. There was a plaque commemorating his occupation under the fascia which proclaimed ‘North West London Citizen' and in smaller letters ‘Every Friday'. There were also several ladies' hairdressers, one boasting the title ‘Antoinette of Paris, Switzerland and Hemel Hempstead'. There were numerous public houses interpolated along the street, with the The Babe in Arms occupying a favoured position adjacent to the public conveniences, two cinemas, the more palatial of which now only featured Indian films, a West Indian Bongo Club and an English Bingo Club, a pawnshop, its avuncular balls first hung in 1896, and ‘The Healing Hands' massage parlour, an establishment of more recent roots.

Despite attempts with paint and plastic to brighten it, the street was decayed and tired, sighing for the euthanasia of the demolition man's flying ball. Davies walked along it, as he had many times in his past five years in that town, but now examining the upper windows and wondering if any eyes had looked down from their vantage on the final journey of Celia Norris.

The upper floors, while mostly curtained and closed, with lights behind them at this time of evening, had the occasionally noteworthy difference. There were the premises of Madame Tarantella Phelps-Smith, High Class Fortunes Told, the Winged Victory Ex-Servicemen's Club, the ubiquitous snooker hall and the Quaker Meeting Room, undoubtedly reeking with the rising odours of the Take-away-Curry shop underneath.

The husky evening itself was layered with odours—Guinness, chips, work and dirt. There was a municipal tree at the junction with Jubilee Road, one of the Victorian offshoots. It was donated by the Rotary Club—and had a plaque to prove it—to commemorate the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and, despite being protectively caged in an iron waistcoat, it was stricken as though by some long-term lightning.

Davies walked the length of the High Street twice in forty minutes. It was busy with buses and homeward cars now, and with people scurrying from their work, thinking of freedom, food, television or possibly love. He ended his thoughtful patrol at The Babe in Arms and went into the elongated bar. Mod was predictably peering into a half pint, which he had purchased with his own money. He was glad to see Davies for he was anxious to know further about his private murder case and his glass was running low.

‘I've started,' said Davies when they were drinking. ‘I've started on the case.'

‘How far have you got?'

‘Nowhere.'

Mod nodded at his beer and at the logic of the reply. ‘Will you keep me informed, Dangerous?' he asked. ‘I have a lot of time to think, you know. I may just come up with something.'

‘I'll tell you,' promised Davies. He glanced up and down the bar. ‘She's not in then? Flamenco Fanny.'

‘No,' confirmed Mod. ‘I think she must have broken her ankle last night when she fell down. With any luck.'

The door opened on cue and the rough woman, her untidy leg in a hammerhead of plaster-of-Paris, stumped in supported by a massive walking stick. ‘Olé!' she cried.

‘Oshit,' said Davies.