Young Petrella (13 page)

There were five of them including Petrella. Five men who keep together and know how to behave are a formidable force.

At one moment Petrella saw a milling crowd of youth, flailing arms and dark bodies, the next, they had broken through, and were on the steps of the Church Hall. There had been no need to do anything. The sight of police reinforcements had had its usual effect and the crowd was shredding away.

The Reverend Philip Freebone, a stalwart young man, had been holding the doorway with a hockey stick. He had the beginnings of a black eye, his hair was on end, and there was a purely secular light in his eye.

“Glad you’ve got here,” he panted.

“Who started it?” said Gwilliam.

“Young Corky – him and his friends.”

Gwilliam said to Petrella, “Grab Corky.”

Petrella knew Corky Williams of old. He looked for a mop of blond, almost white, hair; and saw it, in the dusk, under a lamppost.

Petrella ran. The remains of the crowd was melting fast, but he had to jump one prostrate body and push past two boys who were quietly finishing off a private argument. For a moment he lost sight of Corky. Then he saw him, and put on speed. Corky ran. Petrella ran. The chase lasted the length of two streets, and then Corky, seeing he was going to lose the race, slowed down and Petrella grabbed his arm.

“Come back and do some explaining.”

“Sure, I’ll come with you, Mr. Petrella,” said Corky. He had the appearance of a lost waif and a voice that had melted harder hearts than Petrella’s. “What do you want me for? It’s nothing to do with me. I was just passing.”

“Save it,” said Petrella. “We’ll hear what the parson has to say.”

“You needn’t hold my arm,” said Corky. “I won’t run away.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Petrella, and held his arm twice as tight.

Back at the Church Hall volunteers were clearing up the mess. Four boys were being guarded by a policeman in the changing room, and Sergeant Gwilliam was being talked to by the Reverend Freebone.

“What that Corky wants,” he said, “is the repeated application of a hard-heeled shoe to his bottom. He looks like a cherub, his mother spoils him, and if someone doesn’t do something drastic, he’s going to grow up to be a gangster.”

“I know his mother,” said Sergeant Gwilliam, shortly. “What happened tonight?”

“A week ago I threw young Corky out of the club. For what seemed to me good reasons. I found he’d been using the recreation circle as cover for a pontoon school. And not even” – the reverend gentleman choked slightly – “an honest pontoon school. The cards were marked. And if a boy complained about his losses, he was intimidated by some of the older boys – you’ve got three or four of the worst of them in there. But they weren’t the organisers. They did what they were told – by Corky.”

“I see,” said Gwilliam, “and tonight—?”

“Tonight he turned up, with his supporters, and started shouting at the boys who were coming into club night. They didn’t like it – but it wasn’t until they threw a stone through the window that the trouble really started—”

“I can take it from there,” said Gwilliam. “Who threw the stone? Was that Corky?”

“I don’t think so. He kept very much in the background. But he was there all right. That head of hair’s unmistakable.”

“I’d better have a word with him,” said Gwilliam.

A quarter of an hour later, he returned. He looked frustrated.

“Either he’s the most accomplished liar I’ve ever listened to – or we’re all dreaming,” he said. “You’re sure he was here, when the trouble started, I mean?”

“Absolutely sure. Does he deny it?”

“He says that his mother sent him out on an errand – he’s got all the times and details pat – that he came past the end of the road, heard a lot of noise and shouting, and stopped to see what it was all about.”

“Let’s see the other boys,” suggested Petrella.

The four youths in the changing room all said the same thing in suspicious unison. They’d been walking past the end of the road. (They hadn’t taken the same trouble as Corky to construct an elaborate alibi, Petrella noticed.) They had heard a row. They had stopped to watch. It was nothing to do with them.

“Someone must have started it,” suggested Gwilliam. “Did you happen to see anyone – throwing a stone, for instance?”

They had seen no one.

“You didn’t happen to notice young Williams?”

They had none of them noticed Corky.

The police retired, baffled.

“Ask Corky,” said Petrella, “why he ran away from me.”

Corky was brought in. His blue eyes grew large as he understood the purport of the question. “
Me,
run away,” he said. “Why, it just isn’t true. I was walking away – I didn’t want any part of it. I was two streets away when this other man came running after me. And grabbed me by the arm. He grabbed so hard it hurt.”

Petrella could almost see the blue eyes filling with tears.

He looked at Sergeant Gwilliam, and shook his head.

The Sergeant drew a visible breath. “I’m charging you all,” he said. “Breach of the Peace.”

Petrella had early discovered that it was useless trying to set aside periods for study in his spare time. He had no spare time. Three times in his nominal rest hours he had retired to his lodgings with his textbooks and three times he had been snatched from them by the calls of duty. Now he kept the books in the CID room – a small room, up a flight of stairs at the back of the Crown Road Police Station, which he shared with Sergeant Gwilliam – and studied when he could.

He was committing to memory that difficult table which starts, “Twenty-four grains, one pennyweight, twenty penny-weight, one ounce,” when Chief Inspector Haxtell looked in.

“This Williams case,” he said. “It looks as if it’s blowing up into something. They’ve asked for a remand so that they can brief counsel. And the highups are getting worried and talking about bringing in a big gun themselves.”

“It’s that woman,” said Gwilliam. There was no need to ask. They both knew who he meant.

“They’re building up a lovely case of persecution,” said Haxtell. “Here’s how it goes. Six months ago we charged Mrs. Williams with receiving property – one portable wireless set – knowing the same to have been stolen. So she did, and so it had been. Only we weren’t able to prove it. We knew it had been looted from the Sonning Town Goods Depot. Knowing isn’t proving. She produced a receipt, from a wireless shop, now defunct. And a neighbour, who swore blind she’d had that set for two years. And the court gave her the benefit of the doubt.”

“I see now, sir,” said Petrella, “where Corky gets his eye for detail.”

“They’re both very high-class liars. Now, the story goes on, having failed to convict Mrs. Williams, we try and get at her by trumping up a story about her son. Sounds quite convincing, too. I’d believe it myself if I didn’t know it was all lies.”

It was the lunch hour, on the following day, that Mrs. Williams called to see Petrella. There was, in theory, nothing to prevent people visiting the CID room, but in fact this was the first occasion he could remember of an outsider penetrating it. An apologetic constable put his head round the door, and said, “She had something very important to say – I thought I’d better bring her up.”

“That’s all right,” said Petrella, pushing a work on Elementary Punctuation back into the drawer. “Show her in.”

A sight of Mrs. Williams at close quarters showed where Corky had got his good looks from. She must have been nearer forty than thirty but she possessed those firm, regular, very slightly exaggerated lines of beauty which are so popular in saloon bars and on the music-hall stage. The suggestion of a flower garden in the month of August advanced with her into the room.

As Petrella studied her she repaid him the compliment. She seemed surprised that he was so young.

“Please sit down,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

Her surprise seemed to increase when he spoke.

“You’re educated, aren’t you?” she said. “What are you doing in this crowd?”

“Earning my living.”

“Must be better ways than this.” Her glance comprehended the bare and dusty room, the worn linoleum, the shiny patches on Petrella’s hard-worked elbows.

“I’m endeavouring to better myself,” said Petrella seriously.

“So I heard. You’re going for sergeant, aren’t you?”

If Petrella was surprised he managed to conceal it.

“That’s one of the reasons I came to see you. You heard of Micky Malone?”

Petrella said nothing. Everyone had heard of Micky Malone, housebreaker extraordinary. And every policeman in North London would have given his belt and buttons for the chance of presenting a real, watertight, lawyer-proof case against him.

“If you pulled him in – with the stuff on him – that’d do you some good, wouldn’t it?”

Petrella sat very still. He had been a policeman long enough to know that just so had all great criminals been caught. By some woman, like Mrs. Williams, coming quietly to a CID room and speaking a few simple words. What sordid story of intrigue and violence, of passion and treachery lay behind those words was often not known.

“If you know anything about Malone,” he said, “I’d be glad to listen to it.”

“So you shall,” said Mrs. Williams, crossing one shapely leg over the other, “when the charge against my son is dismissed.”

“I’m not the magistrate,” said Petrella.

“Now don’t you come that sort of stuff with me. I’ve talked to the boy, and I know just where he stands. There’s only one thing against him. That he ran away when he saw you coming. All you’ve got to do is take it back. Say you made a mistake. It was some other boy. He was walking away quietly, like he said.”

“How can I say it when it isn’t true?”

“That’s up to you,” said Mrs. Williams. “It won’t be the first lie the police have told. What about it? Do we deal?”

If Petrella hesitated, it was nothing to do with his decision. He had come to that minutes earlier. It was just that there were certain angles which still puzzled him. At last he said, almost absent-mindedly, “No, of course I can’t make any bargain with you. Now if that’s all. . .”

Mrs. Williams was on her feet and she suddenly looked ten years older and a great deal uglier.

“I’m warning you,” she said. “You’re young. You don’t understand how things go. I’ve got friends.”

“Mind the step,” said Petrella.

“Certainly she’s got friends,” said Gwilliam, when Petrella told him about it. “And that perishing little jack-in-office, Councillor Hayes, is one of them. He’s had it in for the police ever since we didn’t find out who did
his
house nine months ago. If he didn’t do it himself.”

“I don’t think Hayes is a crook,” said Petrella. “Just a busybody. He’s certainly got a bee in his bonnet about the police.”

“As long as he keeps it in his bonnet, and doesn’t let it get out and sting us.”

“I’ve just been reading a book on civics,” said Petrella. “It points out that whilst, outside London, the police forces are under the control of the Borough Council or the County Council as the case may be, in London they are answerable only to the Home Secretary.”

“And who’s
he
answerable to?” said Gwilliam. “Parliament. And who are they answerable to? I’ll tell you. Any nosey little busybody who chooses to make a fuss and get the Press moving.”

Superintendent Barstow at Division was saying the same thing, but in different words, to Chief Inspector Haxtell.

“This is one case we want to
win
,”
he said. “I hear the defence have got Marsham-Tallboys – you remember him? He’s the man who gave the Chief Superintendent such a bad time in the warehouse case. We’ve briefed Collins.”

“What’s all the fuss about?” said Haxtell, uneasily.

“It’s just one of those things,” said Barstow. “If the boy gets off, people will believe we have been persecuting the Williams family. Councillor Hayes is bound to raise it for them. He’s not a crook, but he’s a susceptible old fool. And Mrs. Williams has got him round her little finger. The Press have been a bit restive lately, and this’ll be a Roman holiday for them.”

Haxtell didn’t enquire who would play the role of early Christian martyr. He knew.

“There’s more to it than that,” said Barstow. “I’m told there’s a sort of pressure group trying to put the Home Secretary down. And criticism of the police is the best ammunition they can have.”

“Do you think we ought to drop the case, sir?”

Superintendent Barstow slowly turned a dusky red. “By God, I don’t,” he said. “What you’ve got to do is win it.”

Unconscious of the clouds of political magnitude which were banking in the west, Petrella made his way quietly home that evening to his lodgings. His path took him through Barnaby Passage, and in the darkest part of the passage two figures came out to meet him. His heart gave a jump, then steadied again. They were only boys; as he now saw, two of the Harrington children, Ron, the ten-year-old, and a smaller one whose name he had forgotten. Ron seemed to have something he wanted to say, but as he spoke in a disjointed and breathless whisper it took quite a long time for him to get it across.

When at last he had made his meaning clear, Petrella was filled with a deep and unholy joy.

“Are you absolutely sure?” he said.

“Course I’m sure,” said Ron. “Hazel’s got a friend whose sister chars for Missus Williams. She saw it. She didn’t like to say anything, see. But it’s there all right. On a little plate. It’s
inside the back of the clock. That’s why Missus Williams never seen it.”

“Ron,” said Petrella, “next time I’m here I’m going to bring you the biggest and most unsuitable box of sweets that money can buy.”

“S’all right,” said Ron. “Corky, he won my money, by cheating, see. That’s why we thought we’d tell you. We don’t
want no sweets.”

“You shall have ‘em all the same,” said Petrella.

The Case of the Police against Williams (and others) was one of the most remarkable ever heard in Helenwood Magistrates Court. And its crises were none the less real for not all being apparent on the surface.

The presiding magistrate, Mr. Benkall, was not what is popularly called a “policeman’s magistrate”. He decided cases on the evidence produced and in the light of his own rugged common sense. But even he could not be unaware of the implications of the case he was hearing; of the crowds round the door, of the packed public benches, of eminent counsel in their places, and a press box, usually occupied by one elderly reporter from the
Highside Mercury,
but now bulging with representatives of the national Press.