Death of an Alderman Page 5

  ‘I’m sure there’d be plenty of people to support you in such a situation,’ Wright said.

  ‘Oh, yes——and it was well known that I was always one of Barson’s number one targets. The thing had become almost a standing joke——with everyone but me——’

  ‘Yes. I remember one or two instances,’ Wright said, and tapped his notes with a pencil. ‘Obscene books in the art section——’

  ‘There was a photograph of a nude in a standard album. I’ll guarantee you’ll find it in every branch library of this size in the country.’

  ‘Communist propaganda in the Reading Room——’

  ‘We’d taken the Daily Worker for years——since long before my appointment. I always strive to represent all shades of political opinion.’

  ‘But you found yourself branded a red.’

  Gill smiled.

  ‘It didn’t seem funny at the time. But there’s a difference between the argy-bargy of local government and shooting down a defenceless man.——Well, you mustn’t let me hold you up.——If at any time I can help in any way——’

  Gill left him, and Wright pressed on through the folios until the print began to make him dizzy. He went back to the hotel and found Kenworthy impatiently waiting to go in for the evening meal.

  ‘I’ve got a job for you tonight, Shiner, and God knows how you’re going to do it, but I want every scrap of information you can squeeze out of the situation. The divisional labour party are meeting here tonight, to draw up their own plan of campaign. I want to know what’s said. Any idea how you’ll set about it?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Good! Neither would I have. Well, let’s have an early supper. I’ve got a date with Putty, and I don’t want to let her down.’

  As they ate, Kenworthy let fall bits of news that had come in through the Report Centre. They had unearthed, for example, the former Military Police sergeant of the Special Investigation Branch, who had so nearly brought Barson to early retribution. He was now an inspector in a borough force in a neighbouring county, and would be coming over the next day to give a first-hand account of the affair in Westphalia.

  ‘Inspector Heather’s done a first-rate job of work there, Shiner. He’s dug out the whereabouts of all those six who were charged alongside Barson, their post-war goings-on and everything. A bright bunch they are, too. Only one’s been inside, and he seems to have settled down comfortably since. Of course, they got away with a king’s ransom in that original piece of villainy, if only they found some means of salting it away, which shouldn’t have been too difficult. One of them owns a big garage, another’s a solicitor’s managing clerk. The lieutenant in the case has stood for parliament——unsuccessfully——and sits on the boards of at least half a dozen quite respectable companies.’

  ‘Any of them likely to have been hereabouts recently?’

  ‘That remains to be gone into. Heather’s on the ball. But we mustn’t assume that it’s only those directly connected with the army crime who might be of interest. Any man in the unit who knew what was going on might have seen its future possibilities. Heather’s got quite a lot of spade-work in front of him still. And I was hoping that Malpas would have come up with his report on Futurco Publicity by now. Damn it, it was only half a day’s work, and Bradcaster isn’t the end of the world. We’ve got quite a day ahead of us tomorrow. And the rank and file are working like Trojans on the questionnaire. County are feeding the stuff experimentally into a computer. There’s no telling what that’ll serve up.’

  Kenworthy screwed up his paper table-napkin and declined coffee.

  ‘At eighteenpence a thimbleful, it isn’t worth it,’ he said. ‘Besides, I think Putty knows a caff where we can get a reasonable beaker for sevenpence.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t call her by that ridiculous name,’ Wright said.

  ‘Putty? Short for Patricia. Best she could make of it when she was in the teething-ring and rattle stage. Makes her sound sort of innocent, don’t you think? By the way, did you happen to notice which way the wind was blowing?’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘A young detective should notice everything. So should an old one. It makes a lot of difference, which way you pass the gasworks.’

  Wright was left to the by now familiar delights of the County Hotel. By dint of making one small bottle of beer last a very long time, he managed to watch the left wing party arrive in their twos and threes and take possession of the same small room that Sir Howard and his group had used. Their faces had tougher lines, mostly, than those of their political rivals, though there were one or two who appeared at once to be the intellectuals of the team.

  A bell called the barman for orders, and he returned to them with a tray of drinks. When he came back, he collected Wright’s empty bottle as an excuse to whisper in his ear.

  ‘Would you believe it? They’ve just stood for a minute’s silence for Barson.’

  ‘I’m surprised that they have their meetings here. Haven’t they got their own headquarters in the town?’

  ‘Oh——this isn’t an official meeting. This is an under-the-counter pressure group——the anti-Durkin faction. Besides——they like coming here. If you ask me, the only reason they want to get into power is so that they can play at being Tories.’

  ‘You don’t seem to have much room for either side.’

  ‘I haven’t, sir. I’ve seen too much of both of them. To tell you the truth, I don’t use my vote at all. I never go. I reckon it’s all a waste of time.’

  Wright transferred his empty glass to the counter for the sake of continuing the conversation whenever it was free of other customers, but although the bar was not unduly crowded, there was sufficient coming and going of small groups to prevent much progress. He found himself button-holed by the editor of the Herald, a back-slapping little extrovert called Manterfield, who did his best to tease from him some remark that could be twisted into a brassy headline, but he was saved from elaborate prevarication by chief inspector Dunne, Grayling’s burly second-in-command, who beckoned Wright into a corner. He was in a mood that seemed strangely different from the jovial figure he had cut on the previous night.

  ‘Where’s Kenworthy?’

  ‘Out on enquiries.’

  ‘Did he say when he’d be back?’

  ‘No. Latish, I expect.’

  ‘Something serious has come up. This fellow in the green hat. The day Barson was killed, he spent the whole afternoon in the Public Library.’

  ‘That’s an easy one. He was probably doing what Kenworthy and I did today——running over back numbers of the Gazette and Herald.’

  ‘Would he have to spend three hours closeted with Gill for that? With staff told not to knock, and telephone-calls diverted to an extension?’

  ‘Certainly not. Gill made excuses for Kenworthy and me not to use his room.’

  ‘And he’s had ample opportunity to come and talk to us. He knows the furore that’s on. Not only must the man have something to hide, he must be more than a bit of a fool. He must have known he couldn’t keep this dark. It was one of the girls from the lending-desk who came in with it. She said she’d been sweating cobs all day, especially when you were in there, wondering whether she ought to come forward or not.’

  ‘Looks far-reaching,’ Wright said. ‘Gill had no reason to love Barson. He talks openly about it.’

  ‘Looks as if this might be the key to the whole chute, boy. The thing is——will Kenworthy want us to whip him in?’

  ‘I’m quite sure Kenworthy will want to handle this in his own way.’

  ‘Have you no way of getting in touch with him?’

  Wright pictured Kenworthy chatting to Putty in a cobbled alley between two rows of slums, secure from the public gaze in the shadow behind some one’s lavatory.

  ‘No. He’s essentially mobile.’

  ‘What’s he on? Do you know? Fellaby isn’t exactly a metropolis. I reckon I could soon put my hand on him.’

  ‘I doubt
whether he’d appreciate that. I fancy he’s working on a somewhat sensitive informant.’

  Wright looked at the clock. It was scarcely half past nine. On last night’s form, it would be well over two hours before Kenworthy turned up. Dunne persisted.

  ‘What sort of informant? Where did he pick him up, do you know?’

  ‘He doesn’t tell me everything. One of these teenage malcontents, I think.’

  ‘You’re being bloody cagey, sergeant. I’m not working for a rival firm, you know.’

  ‘You’d be bloody cagey, chief inspector, if you had to work with Kenworthy——and live with him afterwards. If we upset him while he’s in the middle of something that’s just beginning to go the right way——’

  Meanwhile, the pressure group had come out of committee, and were sprawling along the bar. Wright looked quickly in their direction. Dunne followed his glance, irritably.

  ‘Well, I’m for hauling Gill into the nick, sergeant.’

  ‘Knowing Kenworthy, I’m sure he’d prefer to deal with the man on his own ground.’

  ‘And if the bird’s flown, he can always lean back and blame his country cousins.’

  ‘No need for the bird to fly,’ Wright said. ‘We can easily make sure he’s still there. I’ll ring up on some pretext——I can pull a wrong number act, if he answers himself. Then a plain-clothes man can watch the premises until Kenworthy comes back.’

  Dunne accepted this enthusiastically. His main concern was to be relieved of responsibility for the decision.

  ‘Excellent idea, sergeant. And as I happen to know a plain-clothes man who’s got nothing better to do at the moment than sit here guzzling beer——’

  Wright inclined his head towards the group at the bar.

  ‘I’m supposed to be pumping that lot.’

  ‘Pumping that lot? You’d have those buggers dry in a couple of jerks. If there’s anything you want to know about that lot, mate, you just ask me for half an hour of my time——’

  So Wright left a note for Kenworthy and went out into the night. Even more satisfying than the wrong number routine was the fact that he heard Gill’s voice without pressing Button A, and so was able to get his pennies back. He made his way to the grounds of the library, walking on the grass verges to avoid crunching the gravel, and remaining in the shadow of trees and shrubs as much as he could.

  He worked his way behind rhododendrons to a point from which he could see two lighted windows on the top floor. Even at a distance of seventy yards he could hear music——a Beethoven trio, though he did not recognise it as such. In the room in which it was being played, it must have been inordinately loud; presumably Gill was a hi-fi enthusiast.

  The trio came to an end, and there was a pause whilst the record was changed; the Appassionata, at a volume which no piano could have achieved. Wright stood through the whole of the sonata, his fingers numb with cold, and the tips of his ears barely tolerable. Then the music stopped. A light appeared behind the frosted window of a lavatory, and presently he heard the sound of flushing. The light was switched off, and so was that of the room in which the gramophone had been playing. Another light appeared, followed by the rush of water through down-flow pipes.

  ‘Has he gone to bed?’

  Wright started. Kenworthy was standing half a yard behind him.

  ‘He’s on his way.’

  ‘What are you messing about here for, then?’

  ‘Chief inspector Dunne told me——’

  ‘You take your orders from me, not from chief inspector Dunne.’

  ‘I know, but——’

  ‘But nothing.’

  Kenworthy nodded towards Gill’s flat.

  ‘He’s going nowhere tonight. We’ll let him get well into his beauty sleep before we disturb him. Then we can put on our best Gestapo manners and clobber on his door in the middle of the night. Catch him at his lowest ebb. Get his statement while he’s still blinking into our oil-lamps. Let’s go and see what sort of brew they’ve got on in the nick.’

  Dunne was duty officer for the night, and had reverted to his characteristic high spirits now that Kenworthy had reappeared in charge. He received them in an office that was a miniature——but much less tidy——of Grayling’s, and had tea brought in a variety of mugs and cups of which no two specimens were alike.

  ‘What do you make of Gill?’ Kenworthy asked him.

  ‘Weedy so-and-so. Well——you’ve met him, haven’t you? Scared of his own date-stamp——’

  The chief inspector put on mincing tones.

  ‘Well, Mr Dunne, I’m afraid I’m going to have to dun you twopence for that one, ha, ha, ha! Runs a decent library, I suppose. Too damned decent. But he usually has a dirty book under the counter for me and the chief super. At least, they’re dirty to Gill’s way of thinking. Last one he lent me was about a nest of homosexual postmen——but it never really got down to brass tacks. Left too much to the imagination, from which I don’t suffer.——No——I hardly think of Gill advancing up the High Street, fanning his hammers.’

  Kenworthy picked up a match-end and parted the scum that was floating on top of his tea.

  ‘I was going to drop in and see you before I turned in, anyway. Your uniformed branch is going to need a few reinforcements tomorrow night, from what I hear.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. Matters have come to a head in the Stanway gang. It seems there are at least two candidates to take it over. Do the names Riley and Webbe mean anything to you?’

  ‘I know Riley. Did him for receiving a raincoat last November. The other one’s a new one on me.’

  ‘Thomas Webbe,’ Kenworthy said, ‘an outsider. Lives in Dalton Fell. Meets his O Group at a transport café in the Weeldon Road.’

  ‘I know it.——Sal’s.’

  ‘That’s right. Well——Webbe fancies his chances, and the showdown is tomorrow night. All three parties are canvassing for support among the villagers, so there might be quite a few characters in town. Stanway will operate from the Saracen’s Head, Riley from the Coconut Club, Webbe from a mobile column.’

  Dunne made rapid notes on a pad.

  ‘Thanks for the tip-off. Could be ugly.’

  ‘Tell me more about Stanway,’ Kenworthy said. ‘I don’t attach much importance to him, but we can’t rule him out altogether. He might have had a brain-storm.’

  ‘If Chick had a brain-storm, it wouldn’t wet the pavement. I could waft him across the road with my cap.’

  ‘What about his women-folk? I suppose he has a few camp-followers?’

  ‘Several. There are one or two mad-brained enough to hang after him. Steady favourite is a little bint from up Hagley Brow. Putty, they call her. Putty Pearson. Dead rough. Well——her old man’s been known to beat her mother up to procure a miscarriage, so you can tell.’

  ‘Does she——Putty Pearson——exert much influence over Chick?’

  ‘I expect he reacts in the normal masculine way to the usual bits and pieces.’

  Dunne guffawed happily.

  ‘I daresay it’s his coat she’s after.’

  The hands of the huge, institutional clock stood at midnight. Wright uncrossed and recrossed his legs. Kenworthy looked at him patronisingly. At a quarter to one they had another cup of tea. At twenty to two, Kenworthy started the Evening News crossword.

  At two o’clock he announced that they might perhaps think of moving.

  ‘Not, mind you, that I think this is necessarily going to seal things off for us. It’s rather like getting out of a maze by keeping your right hand on the wall. You get out in the end, but you have to go round all the blind alleys first.’

  Chapter Seven

  Crossing the deserted town, Kenworthy reverted to what Wright was beginning to hope was his normal self——a mood in which he treated the sergeant as a reasonable being and an intelligent collaborator.

  ‘Actually——I got a good deal out of Putty tonight.’

  ‘I should think, after the machinery you�
�ve just put into operation, you’re just about washed up with Putty, as far as future dates are concerned.’

  ‘On the contrary, Shiner——Putty is a very anxious little girl. She wants nothing more than to see Chick eased out of his present mode of existence. The main thing is to see that he doesn’t get hurt in the process. Of course, there’ll be a pretty horrible time while she’s trying to nurse his purely neurotic wounds. But she wants him out of the gang, and she feels she can help him over his fallen pride. But when I said I’d learned a lot, I wasn’t thinking of Chick. I’m beginning to like Putty more and more. What she knows about the undercurrents in this town would be enough to write a saga.’

  ‘They live it up on Hagley Brow, do they?’

  ‘And not only Hagley Brow, Shiner——She may not know what an alderman is. She may think the Borough Council was responsible for the nationalisation of the mines and the recession in the textile industry. But when it comes to personalities, she knows more than the Central Record Office. It looks as if I’m going to be fairly well tied up tomorrow, but I want you——amongst a dozen or so other things——to go out and see your elevated friend Sir Howard Who’s-it, and try to get his version of the rise of Barson. That is,’ Kenworthy said, ‘unless we’re on our way back to London on the 10.14. You never can tell——and it wouldn’t break my heart. Except for Putty, I’m not getting much joy out of Fellaby.’

  They entered the museum grounds, and Kenworthy stopped for a moment by the boarded window.

  ‘Shiner——we must find out what the light was like on the famous night. Unless it was pitch dark, a man would have been a fool to have worked on that window from the outside. He’d be a prey to anyone chancing to pass the main gate.’

  They went round to the private door of the flat, and, not satisfied with prolonged pressure on the bell-push, Kenworthy hammered on the door with the side of his first, so that the echoes reverberated from the walls of buildings in all parts of the town.