Not Safe After Dark (18 page)

‘Only that Colin was a friend to the children and that he had no reason to harm anyone.’

‘
Friend
,’ DS Longbottom sneered, struggling to his feet. ‘We can only be thankful you’re not regular police, Mr Bascombe,’ he said, nodding to himself, in
acknowledgement of his own wisdom. ‘That we can.’

‘So what are you going to do?’ I asked.

DS Longbottom looked at his watch and frowned. Either he was trying to work out what it meant when the little hand and the big hand were in the positions they were in, or he was squinting
because of poor eyesight. ‘I’ll have a word with this here Colin Gormond. Other than that, there’s not much more we can do tonight. First thing tomorrow morning, we’ll drag
the canal.’ He got to the door, turned, pointed to the windows and said, ‘And don’t forget to put up your blackout curtains, ma’m, or you’ll have the ARP man to answer
to.’

Mary Critchley burst into floods of tears again.

•

Even the soft dawn light could do nothing for the canal. It oozed through the city like an open sewer, oil slicks shimmering like rainbows in the sun, brown water dotted with
industrial scum and suds, bits of driftwood and paper wrappings floating along with them. On one side was Ezekiel Woodruff’s scrapyard. Old Woodruff was a bit of an eccentric. He used to come
around the streets with his horse and cart, yelling, ‘Any old iron,’ but now the government had other uses for scrap metal – supposedly to be used in aircraft manufacture –
poor old Woodruff didn’t have a way to make his living any more. He’d already sent old Nell the carthorse to the knacker’s yard, where she was probably doing her bit for the war
effort by helping to make the glue to stick the aircraft together. Old mangles and bits of broken furniture stuck up from the ruins of the scrapyard like shattered artillery after a battle.

On the other side, the bank rose steeply towards the backs of the houses on Canal Road, and the people who lived there seemed to regard it as their personal tip. Flies and wasps buzzed around
old hessian sacks and paper bags full of God knew what. A couple of buckled bicycle tyres and a wheel-less pram completed the picture.

I stood and watched as Longbottom supervised the dragging, a slow and laborious process that seemed to be sucking all manner of unwholesome objects to the surface – except Johnny
Critchley’s body.

I felt tense. At any moment I half expected the cry to come from one of the policemen in the boats that they had found him, half expected to see the small, pathetic bundle bob above the
water’s surface. I didn’t think Colin Gormond had done anything to Johnny – nor Maurice, though DS Longbottom had seemed suspicious of him too – but I did think that, given
how upset he was, Johnny might just have jumped in. He never struck me as the suicidal type, but I have no idea whether suicide enters the minds of nine-year-olds. All I knew was that he
was
upset about his father, and he
was
last seen skulking by the canal.

So I stood around with DS Longbottom and the rest as the day grew warmer, and there was still no sign of Johnny. After about three hours, the police gave up and went for bacon and eggs at
Betty’s Cafe over on Chadwick Road. They didn’t invite me, and I was grateful to be spared both the unpleasant food and company. I stood and stared into the greasy water a while longer,
unsure whether it was a good sign or not that Johnny wasn’t in the canal, then I decided to go and have a chat with Colin Gormond.

•

‘What is it, Colin?’ I asked him gently. ‘Come on. You can tell me.’

But Colin continued to stand with his back turned to me in the dark corner of his cramped living room, hands to his face, making eerie snuffling sounds, shaking his head. It was bright daylight
outside, but the blackout curtains were still drawn tightly, and not a chink of light crept between their edges. I had already tried the light switch, but either Colin had removed the bulb or he
didn’t have one.

‘Come on, Colin. This is silly. You know me. I’m Mr Bascombe. I won’t hurt you. Tell me what happened.’

Finally Colin turned silent and came out of his corner with his funny, shuffling way of walking. Someone said he had a club foot, and someone else said he’d had a lot of operations on his
feet when he was a young lad, but nobody knew for certain why he walked the way he did. When he sat down and lit a cigarette, the match light illuminated his large nose, shiny forehead and watery
blue eyes. He used the same match to light a candle on the table beside him, and then I saw them: the black eye, the bruise on his left cheek. DS Longbottom. The bastard.

‘Did you say anything to him?’ I asked, anxious that DS Longbottom might have beaten a confession out of Colin, without even thinking that Colin probably wouldn’t still be at
home if that were the case.

He shook his head mournfully. ‘Nothing, Mr Bascombe. Honest. There was nothing I
could
tell him.’

‘Did you see Johnny Critchley yesterday, Colin?’

‘Aye.’

‘Where?’

‘Down by the canal.’

‘What was he doing?’

‘Just standing there chucking stones in the water.’

‘Did you talk to him?’

Colin paused and turned away before answering, ‘No.’

I had a brief coughing spell, his cigarette smoke working on my gassed lungs. When it cleared up, I said, ‘Colin, there’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there?
You’d better tell me. You know I won’t hurt you, and I just might be the only person who can help you.’

He looked at me, pale eyes imploring. ‘I only called out to him, from the bridge, like, didn’t I?’

‘What happened next?’

‘Nothing. I swear it.’

‘Did he answer?’

‘No. He just looked my way and shook his head. I could tell then that he didn’t want to play. He seemed sad.’

‘He’d just heard his dad’s been killed.’

Colin’s already watery eyes brimmed with tears. ‘Poor lad.’

I nodded. For all I knew, Colin might have been thinking about
his
dad, too. Not many knew it, but Mr Gormond senior had been killed in the same bloody war that left me with my bad lungs
and scarred face. ‘What happened next, Colin?’

Colin shook his head and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It was such a lovely day I just went on walking. I went to the park and watched the
soldiers digging trenches, then I went for my cigarettes and came home to listen to the wireless.’

‘And after that?’

‘I stayed in.’

‘All evening?’

‘That’s right. Sometimes I go down to the White Rose, but . . .’

‘But what, Colin?’

‘Well, Mr Smedley, you know, the air-raid precautions man?’

I nodded. ‘I know him.’

‘He said my blackout cloth wasn’t good enough and he’d fine me if I didn’t get some proper stuff by yesterday.’

‘I understand, Colin.’ Good-quality, thick, impenetrable blackout cloth had become both scarce and expensive, which was no doubt why Colin had been cheated in the first place.

‘Anyway, what with that and the cigarettes . . .’

I reached into my pocket and slipped out a few bob for him. Colin looked away, ashamed, but I put it on the table and he didn’t tell me to take it back. I knew how it must hurt his pride
to accept charity, but I had no idea how much money he made, or how he made it. I’d never seen him beg, but I had a feeling he survived on odd jobs and lived very much from hand to mouth.

I stood up. ‘All right, Colin,’ I said. ‘Thanks very much.’ I paused at the door, uncertain how to say what had just entered my mind. Finally I blundered ahead. ‘It
might be better if you kept a low profile till they find him, Colin. You know what some of the people around here are like.’

‘What do you mean, Mr Bascombe?’

‘Just be careful, Colin, that’s all I mean. Just be careful.’

He nodded gormlessly and I left.

•

As I shut Colin’s front door, I noticed Jack Blackwell standing on his doorstep, arms folded, a small crowd of locals around him, their shadows intersecting on the cobbled
street. They kept glancing towards Colin’s house, and when they saw me come out they all shuffled off except Jack himself, who gave me a grim stare before going inside and slamming his door.
I felt a shiver go up my spine, as if a goose had stepped on my grave, as my dear mother used to say, bless her soul, and when I got home I couldn’t concentrate on my book one little bit.

•

By the following morning, when Johnny had been missing over thirty-six hours, the mood in the street had started to turn ugly. In my experience, when you get right down to it,
there’s no sorrier spectacle, nothing much worse or more dangerous, than the human mob mentality. After all, armies are nothing more than mobs, really, even when they are organized to a
greater or lesser degree. I’d been at Ypres, as you know, and there wasn’t a hell of a lot you could tell me about military organization. So when I heard the muttered words on
doorsteps, saw the little knots of people here and there, Jack Blackwell flitting from door to door like a political canvasser, I had to do something, and I could hardly count on any help from DS
Longbottom.

One thing I had learned both as a soldier and as a schoolteacher was that, if you had a chance, your best bet was to take out the ringleader. That meant Jack Blackwell. Jack was the nasty type,
and he and I had had more than one run-in over his son Nick’s bullying and poor performance in class. In my opinion, young Nick was the sort of walking dead loss who should probably have been
drowned at birth, a waste of skin, sinew, tissue and bone, and it wasn’t hard to see where he got it from. Nick’s older brother, Dave, was already doing a long stretch in the Scrubs for
beating a night watchman senseless during a robbery, and even the army couldn’t find an excuse to spring him and enlist his service in killing Germans. Mrs Blackwell had been seen more than
once walking with difficulty, with bruises on her cheek. The sooner Jack Blackwell got his call-up papers, the better things would be all around.

I intercepted Jack between the Deakins’ and the Kellys’ houses, and it was clear from his gruff, ‘What do you want?’ that he didn’t want to talk to me.

But I was adamant.

‘Morning, Jack,’ I greeted him. ‘Lovely day for a walk, isn’t it?’

‘What’s it to you?’

‘Just being polite. What are you up to, Jack? What’s going on?’

‘None of your business.’

‘Up to your old tricks? Spreading poison?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He made to walk away, but I grabbed his arm. He glared at me but didn’t do anything. Just as well. At my age, and with my
lungs, I’d hardly last ten seconds in a fight. ‘Jack,’ I said, ‘don’t you think you’d all be best off using your time to look for the poor lad?’

‘Look for him! That’s a laugh. You know as well as I do where that young lad is.’

‘Where? Where is he, Jack?’

‘You know.’

‘No, I don’t. Tell me.’

‘He’s dead and buried, that’s what.’

‘Where, Jack?’

‘I don’t know the exact spot. If he’s not in the canal, then he’s buried somewhere not far away.’

‘Maybe he is. But you don’t
know
that. Not for certain. And even if you believe that, you don’t know who put him there.’

Jack wrenched his arm out of my weakening grip and sneered. ‘I’ve got a damn sight better idea than you have, Frank Bascombe. With all your
book
learning!’ Then he
turned and marched off.

Somehow I got the feeling that I had just made things worse.

•

After my brief fracas with Jack Blackwell, I was at a loose end. I knew the police would still be looking for Johnny, asking questions, searching areas of waste ground, so there
wasn’t much I could do to help them. Feeling impotent, I went down to the canal, near Woodruff’s scrapyard. Old Ezekiel Woodruff himself was poking around in the ruins of his business,
so I decided to talk to him. I kept my distance, though, for even on a hot day such as this Woodruff was wearing his greatcoat and black wool gloves with the fingers cut off. He wasn’t known
for his personal hygiene, so I made sure I didn’t stand downwind of him. Not that there was much of a wind, but then it didn’t take much.

‘Morning, Ezekiel,’ I said. ‘I understand young Johnny Critchley was down around here the day before yesterday.’

‘So they say,’ muttered Ezekiel.

‘See him, did you?’

‘I weren’t here.’

‘So you didn’t see him?’

‘Police have already been asking questions.’

‘And what did you tell them?’

He pointed to the other side of the canal, the back of the housing estate. ‘I were over there,’ he said. ‘Sometimes people chuck out summat of value, even these
days.’

‘But you did see Johnny?’

He paused, then said, ‘Aye.’

‘On this side of the canal?’

Woodruff nodded.

‘What time was this?’

‘I don’t have a watch, but it weren’t long after that daft bloke had gone by.’

‘Do you mean Colin Gormond?’

‘Aye, that’s the one.’

So Johnny was still alone by the canal
after
Colin had passed by. DS Longbottom had probably known this, but he had beaten Colin anyway. One day I’d find a way to get even with him.
The breeze shifted a little and I got a whiff of stale sweat and worse. ‘What was Johnny doing?’

‘Doing? Nowt special. He were just walking.’

‘Walking? Where?’

Woodruff pointed. ‘That way. Towards the city centre.’

‘Alone?’

‘Aye.’

‘And nobody approached him?’

‘Nope. Not while I were watching.’

I didn’t think there was anything further to be got from Ezekiel Woodruff, so I bade him good morning. I can’t say the suspicion didn’t enter my head that
he
might have
had something to do with Johnny’s disappearance, though I’d have been hard pushed to say exactly why or what. Odd though old Woodruff might be, there had never been any rumour or
suspicion of his being overly interested in young boys, and I didn’t want to jump to conclusions the way Jack Blackwell had. Still, I filed away my suspicions for later.