Petrella at 'Q' (7 page)

And so, at three o’clock on that hot afternoon in August, Arthur Lamson descended the stairs which lead down from the dock in the Court of Criminal Appeal and emerged, a free man.

A considerable reception awaited him. The committee of welcome consisted of a number of reporters, mainly from the sporting papers, but a scattering from the national Press as well; one or two very minor celebrities, who didn’t care where they went as long as they got into the photograph; members of the Grendel Street Sporting Club, friends and hangers-on of both sexes.

The party started immediately in the bar of the Law Courts, but this was too small to contain everyone who wanted to get in on the act. A move was made to a small club behind Fleet Street which was broad-minded about membership and seemed to observe its own licensing hours.

By six o’clock the party was larger than when it had started, and much louder. Lamson had a six-month thirst to quench, and he stood, at the centre of the noisiest group, a schooner of whisky in his large right hand, the sweat running in rivulets down his red face, a monarch unjustly deposed, returning in triumph to his kingdom.

“I got a great respect for the laws of England,” he announced. “They don’t put an innocent man in prison. Not like some countries I could name.”

“That’s right, Art,” said the chorus.

“I’m not saying anything against the police. They’ve got their job to do, like I’ve got mine. If they’re prepared to let bygones be bygones, I’m prepared to do the same.”

This treaty of friendship with the police force was felt to be in the best of taste, and a fresh round of drinks was ordered.

Back in Grendel Street extensive preparations had been made for the return of the hero. Streamers had been placed in position, from top-storey windows, spanning the street, and banners had been hung out with, “Welcome Home Art” embroidered on them in letters of red cotton-wool. The two public houses, the Wheelwrights Arms at one end of the street and the Duke of Albany at the other end, were both doing a roaring trade, and the band of the Railway Recreational Club was starting on its favourite piece which was the
William Tell Overture.

The organiser of these festivities was seated at her bedroom window, in a chair, looking down on the street. This was old Mrs. Lamson, Art’s mother, the matriarch of Grendel Street. Ma Lamson was a character in her own right. She had married, out-drunk, out-talked and out-lived three husbands, the third of whom was Art’s father. A stroke had paralysed her legs, but not her tongue. Confined to a wheelchair, and rendered even more impatient by her confinement, her shrill voice still dominated the street.

“Fix the end of that streamer, you big git,” she screeched. “It’s flapping like a lot of bloody washing on a line. That’s better. My God, if I wasn’t here to keep an eye on things, you’d have the whole bloody lot down in the bloody street. And Albert”— this was to a middle-aged man, one of her sons by her first marriage, himself a grandfather—”clear those buggers back onto the pavement.” She indicated the drinkers outside the Wheelwrights Arms who were sketching an informal eightsome reel to the strains of
William Tell.
“We want Art to drive straight down the street when he comes home, don’t we? He can’t do it if they’ve toned it into a pally-de-dance, can he?”

By eight o’clock the original party had moved from the Fleet Street club, and re-established itself in the back room of a public house near Blackfriars Station. Its constituents had gradually changed. The journalists had slid away, to write up their impressions of the event for next morning’s papers. The very minor celebrities had gone in search of the next happening to which they could attach themselves. What remained was a hard core of serious drinkers, a few friends of Art’s, but mostly friends of friends, or those complete strangers who seem to have a knack of attaching themselves to any party which has reached a stage of general euphoria.

One of the few men there who knew Art personally said, towards nine o’clock, “You ought to be getting back sometime soon. Your old lady’ll be expecting you.”

“That’s right,” said Art, “she will.” He made no attempt to move.

“She’s got a sort of reception organised, I understand.”

“She’s a lovely person,” said Art. “I’m lucky to have a mother like that. Have you got a mother?”

The friend said that he had a mother, and she was a lovely person, too.

Towards ten o’clock the black clouds, which had been piling up from the west had blotted out moon and stars and the air was electric with the coming storm.

The party was showing signs of disintegrating. There were no formal farewells. People drifted out and did not reappear. For some time now, Art had been conscious of the girl. To start with, there had been quite a few girls in the party. This one had sat quietly in the background drinking whatever was put into her hand and minding her own business. Nobody knew exactly who had brought her, but nobody minded because she was a good-looking chick, with blue eyes, black hair, and lots up top. Not obtrusive, but enough to catch the eye comfortably.

Art found his thoughts centering on the girl. Drink was not the only thing he had been deprived of for the past six months. When she looked up at him and smiled, what had been vague ambition became clear desire.

How it happened, he was not clear. At one moment he was putting down an empty glass on the counter, at the next he was on the back seat of the taxi with the girl.

He slid one arm round her waist. She said, “Don’t start anything here, love. The taxi driver’ll sling us out. Wait till we get there.”

“Where are we going?”

The girl sounded surprised. “Back to my place, of course,” she said.

Art was happy to wait. He was three out of four parts drunk. One thing was puzzling him. If this chick really had been knocking back all the drinks that had been offered to her, she should have been blind drunk, but she sounded sober. A bit tensed up, he thought, but cool. Perhaps she had a very hard head. She certainly had a beautiful little body.

Her place was a surprise too. It was certainly not a tart’s pad. It was on the third floor of an old-fashioned house and had the look of a working girl’s flat, small but neat. She sat him down on the sofa, and said, “What about a bite of food, eh?”

This seemed to Art to be an excellent suggestion. He needed something to absorb the alcohol he had put into himself. The girl poured him out a drink from a bottle on the sideboard.

She said, “I won’t be a minute,” and disappeared into the small room next door which was evidently the kitchen.

Art sipped his drink, and lay back on the sofa. He had had so much luck lately that this little extra bit seemed a natural bonus. The only trouble was that he was feeling damnably sleepy. It really would be a bad joke if, with this gorgeous chick offering herself to him, he couldn’t stay awake to do anything about it.

He laughed, and the laugh turned into a snort, and then into a strangled snore.

Five minutes later the girl reappeared. She picked up the glass, which had rolled on to the floor, and stared down at Art, full length on the sofa, his face red and sweating, his mouth wide open. There was no expression in her blue eyes at all.

First she moved over and shot the bolt on the door. Then she went to a cupboard in the corner of the room. It seemed to have household stuff in it. She selected what she needed, and came back.

When the storm broke Petrella was sitting in the charge room at Patton Street talking to Chief Superintendent Watterson.

“This should cool their heads,” said the Superintendent. “They’ve been jazzing it up since opening time.”

“Has the great man put in an appearance yet?”

He was answered by the telephone. It was Ma Lamson. Her voice had in it anger, vexation and an edge of fear. Petrella found it difficult to make out what she was saying.

He said, “Hold on a minute,” and to Watterson, “She says Art hasn’t turned up, and she’s worried something may have happened to him. I can’t really make out what she wants. I’d better go down and have a word with her.”

“Watch it, Patrick. They all know it was you pulled him in. They’ll still be hot about it.”

“No one could be hot in this weather,” said Petrella. The rain was coming down solidly. He drove down to Grendel Street in a police car, stopped it at the end of the street, turned up the collar of his raincoat and went forward on foot.

The street was empty, its gutters running with water. Overhead the banners of welcome flapped, damp and forlorn. The band had cased its instruments and hurried home.

Only Ma Lamson kept vigil at her upstairs window. The rain, blowing in, had soaked her white hair which hung, in dank ropes, on either side of her pink face.

“Where is he?” she screeched. “Where’s my boy? Art wouldn’t let us down. Something’s happened to him, I know. ‘E’s got enemies, Inspector. They’ll have been laying for him. You’ve got to do something.”

Petrella stood in the pelting rain and looked up at the old woman. The release of the storm had cleared his head. It had done more. It had made him almost light-headed. He felt a hysterical urge to laugh.

Restraining it, he promised that a general alert should be sent out, and made his way back to Patton Street.

He said dreamily to Watterson, “It was pure Old Testament.”

“What are you talking about?”

The Superintendent knew that Petrella had a reputation for eccentricity. He had once quoted poetry at a meeting of the top brass at Scotland Yard, and had got away with it because it was Rabbie Burns, who happened to be the Assistant Commissioner’s favourite poet.

“The mother of Sisera looked out of her window and cried, ‘Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why tarry the wheels of his chariot?’”

“Who the hell was Sisera?”

“He was a king in Canaan. When he was on his way back to a triumphant welcome, organised by his mother, he was lured into the tent of a young lady called “And what did she do?”

“He asked for water, and she gave him milk. She brought forth butter, in a lordly dish.”

“I see,” said Watterson doubtfully. “And what happened then?”

“Then she took a mallet in one hand and a tent peg in the other, and she smote him. At her feet he bowed, he fell. Where he fell, there he lay down, dead.”

“What you need is a holiday,” said Watterson firmly. “You’re going on leave first thing tomorrow, if I have to stand in for you myself.”

Five days later, when the police, alerted by worried neighbours, broke into the third-floor flat of Bruno’s girl, Jackie, they found Art Lamson.

Jackie had driven a six-inch nail clean through the middle of his forehead, and had then cut her own throat. But Petrella knew nothing of this. He was helping his small son to construct a sand fort and adorn its battlements with sea shells.

It was a fine morning in early October when Detective Inspector Patrick Petrella became Detective Chief Inspector Petrella. The promotion had been expected for some time, but it was nevertheless agreeable when a copy of District Orders and a friendly note of congratulations from Chief Superintendent Watterson arrived together on his desk at Patton Street Police Station.

He had been six months in Q Division and had been carrying out a mental stocktaking. A few successes, a lot of routine work done without discredit, one or two undoubted flops. One of the worst had been his failure to secure the conviction of Arthur Bond. If ever anyone should have been found guilty and fined or even gaoled it was—

“A Mr. Bond asking for you,” said Constable Lampier, projecting his untidy head of hair round the door. Lampier was the newest, youngest, least efficient and most cheerful of the constables at Patton Street. Repeated orders from Sergeant Blencowe to smarten himself up generally and for God’s sake get his hair cut had had a superficial effect. Like brushing a puppy which immediately goes out and chases a cat through a thorn-bush. “Mr.
Who?
”

“Bond. He’s the geezer who keeps that garage. The one we didn’t make it stick with that time—”

“All right, all right,” said Petrella. “Don’t let’s conduct a post mortem. Just show him in.”

Mr. Bond was not one of his favourite people. He had a big white face, a lower lip which turned down like the spout of a jug and a voice which grated more when he tried to be friendly than when he was in his normal mood of oily arrogance. On this occasion he was making no attempt to be agreeable.

He said, “You’ve got no right to say the things you’ve been saying about me. I’m telling you, I’m not standing for it.”

“If you’d explain what you’re talking about.”

“I’ll explain, all right.”

He opened his briefcase and threw a document on to the table. It was a photocopy, and to Petrella’s astonishment, it was a copy of a report he had himself written the day before.

He said, “Where on earth did you get that?”

“Never mind where I got it. You got no right to say those things.”

“I do mind where you got it. And I insist on an explanation.”

“If you want an explanation, ask the editor of the
Courier.”

“I certainly will ask him,” said Petrella grimly, “and I hope he’s got an explanation, because if he hasn’t, he’s going to be in trouble.”

“The person who’s going to be in trouble,” said Mr. Bond, his lower lip quivering with some indefinable emotion, “is you. This is libellous. I’ve got my rights. I’m going to take this to court. You can’t go around taking away people’s characters. You ought to know that.”

“If you produce this document in court, you realise you’ll have to explain exactly how you got hold of it.”

“No difficulty. The editor gave it to me.”

“Then he’ll have to explain.”

“You don’t seem to realise,” snarled Mr. Bond, “It isn’t him or me who’s in trouble. It’s you.”

When he had gone Petrella telephoned Sergeant Blencowe. He said, “Yesterday I sent a batch of confidentials by hand to Central. Find out who took them, and send him up.”

Five minutes later the untidy top-knot of Constable Lampier made a second appearance round his door.