Gently Sahib (18 page)

Her eyes jumped wide. Groton had seen her. Dutt could feel her fingers hook into his arm. Groton’s deepset eyes were blazing animal-like, like the blind staring of one of his cats.

And suddenly he roared, heaved against his chest, sent the handcuffs flying from his wrists . . .

‘Pull him down!’

There wasn’t time! His right hand snatched, drew back, whirled. Something flew, landed with a thump, and Shirley Banks collapsed screaming.

T
HE AMBULANCE ARRIVED
.

Shirley Banks hadn’t been seriously wounded by Groton’s knife. It had struck her high up in the left shoulder and had glanced upwards over the bone.

But she had bled a lot and was in great pain, and went out like a light when she got a jab.

If Groton’s intention had been to stop her talking, for the moment he had succeeded.

After throwing the knife he’d tried to make a break for it, running in the direction of his vehicles. But about twenty of them, police and pressmen, had chased after him and brought him down. He’d been roughed-up in the melee and was now no advertisement for restrained handling. This time he was handcuffed behind his back and also pinioned with a length of lighting-flex.

Then he was hustled to a car, in another camera-festival, and driven off to the cells.

From the time he’d been disarmed and thrown by Perkins he hadn’t spoken one word.

When the car had left Perkins sought out Gently.

‘What can we do about the animals . . .?’

Poor fellow! He was quite thrown out of his stride by the lionizing of the pressmen. He hung about, looking a picture of guilt, trying hard to keep himself in the background. Evidently he couldn’t forget that terrible moment when he’d used violence to effect an arrest . . .

‘We’d better call in his hired help. They should know what to do.’

‘But Groton did the feeding, don’t you remember?’

‘All right. Try the RSPCA.’

‘But would they know . . .’

‘Just try them!’

Perkins began to look happier. Irritating people he understood, it put him on better terms with himself.

‘Also, you’d better get a search warrant. You might turn up something in the house.’

‘We only have the woman’s word for it . . .’

‘Come on. I want to see Groton’s car.’

He strode off towards the compound, with the menage hurrying after him. But somehow, now that Groton and Shirley Banks had gone, one could feel an atmosphere of anticlimax.

The stars were missing . . . Nobody quite knew what the drama they had played portended, but it had been an enthralling drama, proceeding with an inner logic of its own.

All that was left now was the set and a few of the props, like the dead panther.

‘Which of you is Slater?’

‘I’m Slater.’

He was the cameraman who’d lurked at the corner.

‘I want you to look at Groton’s estate car, to see if anything’s changed since you took your photograph.’

They examined the car. The off-side headlamp had no glass and was dented. The fairing below it was also dented and the glass of the sidelight cracked. Part of the grille was driven in and the horn and end of the bumper bent.

‘Anything altered?’

‘He’s cleared the glass out. A lot of it was there when I took the pic.’

‘Who else could have got at the car today?’

‘Well, his two men were here this morning.’

‘Nobody else?’

‘His housekeeper. He’s had no visitors – apart from the blonde.’

A pressman asked: ‘What do you make of it, chiefie?’

Gently shrugged. ‘You can see what I see. Groton took his car out last night and collided with something – or somebody.’

‘Can we print the “somebody”?’

‘After we’ve checked. Haven’t you enough stuff for one day?’

Aside to Perkins he said: ‘Have the car brought in. And when you’re searching here – find that glass!’

But the sense of anticlimax persisted . . . what was a hit-and-run case, after all? Every day people died on the roads, it was strictly commonplace, non-news.

More to the point was the chewed shoe which Dutt, perhaps unconsciously, was carrying about with him, or the question which Perkins was dying to ask but daren’t:

‘What ought we to do with the panther?’

Anticlimax! The point where routine took over from sensation.

‘Leave a man here, and let’s get back. Maybe Groton will have found his tongue.’

A sad-faced constable named Culford was selected to stand guard. The pressmen scattered to their cars, suddenly silent and urgent. Hargrave, putting on a big act, was dispersing sightseers from the lane.

Then a squad car arrived. Gipping jumped out, looking excited.

‘The Yard have rung us, sir . . . it’s rather peculiar. I thought you should know straight away.’

‘What’s bothering them?’

‘Shimpling, sir. They’ve identified another man as Shimpling.’

‘Another man?’

‘Yes, sir. He’s dead. He was killed in an accident last night. There was identification on the body.’

Gently stared. ‘Let’s get this straight! He’s been identified as our Shimpling?’

‘Yes, sir. Living at a flat in Fulham, just off the King’s Road.’

‘Killed in an accident?’

‘In Kingsway, sir. He was stepping off the pavement when he was hit. They’re trying to find the car now, but they’re sure it’s the same Shimpling.’

Gently looked at Perkins. Perkins had turned red. One could read his thoughts as though they were being screened on that quickly sagging, chubby face.

‘But that’s nonsense!’

Gently shook his head. On the contrary, it was perfect sense.

‘But then . . . who’s the one we’ve got in the morgue?’

‘Who else is missing?’

Perkins gaped.

Groton wasn’t talking.

He sat in his cell with the broody withdrawal of a penned gorilla, deaf, ignoring all about him, alive only in his smouldering eyes.

Perkins read out the charge to him – intent to murder and actual GBH – but the formal warning that Groton need say nothing must have sounded ridiculous even to Perkins.

Groton hadn’t, wasn’t saying anything.

He needed no warning, now or ever.

When Perkins had finished Groton climbed on the bunk, turned his face to the wall, apparently slept.

But if Groton was saying nothing, Shirley Banks wanted to say plenty. Only two hours after she was admitted to hospital the telephone rang.

‘This is Abbotsham District Hospital, Sister Brassey, Emergency Ward . . .’

The patient Banks was being difficult and demanded to talk to Superintendent Gently.

‘Is she fit to talk?’ Gently asked.

‘Perfectly fit, in her opinion. But she won’t calm down until she’s seen you, so you may as well visit her.’

Gently, Perkins, Dutt, drove to the hospital. Shirley Banks was in a private room. She was lying propped up on a white-painted iron bedstead and had on a hospital shift of coarse linen.

‘Don’t tell me – I’m looking a fright!’

In point of fact, she merely looked like a patient. Her face had been scrubbed of its thick cosmetics and her hair brushed cleanly back and pinned. She had patches of plaster on her neck and arms, a dressing taped to her left shoulder.

Without the cosmetics she looked older, pleasanter. Her eyes were woosey from the injection.

‘Sit down . . . have you brought a notebook with you? Hell! This shoulder’s giving me socks . . .

‘Do you really feel up to it, Miss Banks?’

‘Sit down, copper. I’m the boss round here.’

Gently sat in a comfortless easy chair. Dutt took out his notebook and perched on the radiator.

The room was small and seemed to lack something. What was missing? Yes – flowers!

‘Where do I start? You know about Peter?’

Gently nodded. ‘We’ve heard.’

‘Copper, you nail Groton for that good and proper. He’s a murderous bastard from his heels up.’

‘You mentioned a letter . . .’

‘Yes, the letter. He pinched it back along with the other stuff. He’d jemmied the door and frisked the place . . . a damn fine mess the bastard made.’

‘What was in the letter?’

‘It fixed the appointment, nine-thirty at Groton’s club. Anywhere else Pete wouldn’t have gone – he knew the swine too well for that.

‘But the Safari Club, that was different. What could Groton pull there?’

‘Why did he want to meet Groton?’

‘Don’t kid me, copper. It was a bit of black. All this time Pete was lying low . . . then the body turned up. It did something to him. Mind you, he’d never been the same, not like he was before it happened. But the body turning up made him snap out of it – made him angry, I guess that was it.

‘So he sent a black-letter to Groton and Groton made the appointment. A couple of thou he should have brought. But all Pete got was a car in the back.’

‘And you came up here . . . ?’

Her lids dropped.

‘Yeah, I came up here because I was mad. Because I wanted to make him pay. I wouldn’t have cared a crap if I’d shot him.

‘You know what he told me? That the panther was his banker, that he kept his dough in its cage. And I swallowed it, a line like that. Next thing I was clawing up a tree.’

She gave a shudder, then fell swearing at the pain in her shoulder.

‘Now I know what it’s like,’ she said. ‘I can understand what it did to Peter.’

‘What did it do to Peter?’

She moaned, touched the dressing with a finger.

‘His hair went white, that’s the spitting truth. Two days afterwards he was white.’

‘After what?’

‘After what happened. He couldn’t get out of that bloody place. He had to listen to it eating the bloke . . . it gave him the screaming willies for months.’

‘We’re talking about the tiger?’

‘What the hell else?’

‘I’d like you to tell me what happened before that.’

She slid a look at him.

‘Are you pinching me, copper?’

Gently shook his head.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Well, OK.’

She reached for the water-container on her locker, but Perkins was there first. He slopped water in her glass. She ran a casual eye over Perkins.

‘Man,’ she said, ‘don’t blush for those shoulders!’

Perkins retired. Miss Banks drank water.

‘So about Peter and me,’ she said. ‘We were buddies from a long time back – maybe I don’t have to tell you about that. Pete was a nance. That didn’t bother me, we had our moments, all the same. He was nice to me, always nice. That goes a long way with a girl.

‘Then we did a little work together . . . he could trust me, understand? Mostly blacks work on their own, but Pete and me made a team. He’d give me a mark and I’d lay him, Pete would be there with the camera. Sometimes he pulled a nance job and then it was me who took the picture. I got a percentage. He never gyped me. I haven’t been on the bash for years. I used to pick up the dough for him mostly – clients were forgetful about posting it.

‘Pete got his hooks into the doctor, but he lost him for a time after the trial. That made him mad because the doctor had roughed him up, and there was a fat connection Pete was after. Pete had a screw on Groton too. That bastard had killed some natives in Kenya. Pete had a picture of him with the bodies and a truck behind them, showing the number plate. Groton whipped that, of course. He cleaned out everything from the flat.

‘Anyway, when Pete was in Abbotsham collecting money from Groton he met the doctor again – he was living here under a different name. That gave Pete a notion to come here. He was having a bit of trouble in town. One of his clients had swallowed a gun and I don’t know, one thing and another. Anyway, the doctor was flogging houses and Pete blacked him for a bungalow, then we moved in and started building a connection out this way.

‘Pete was good, you know that? He was a bloody fine operator. He could smell black in a moment and he could handle clients when he got them. Once he read a case in the paper – didn’t know a thing about the bloke! – but he sat down and wrote this fellow a letter, and next day I was collecting the moolah.

‘Laugh? We killed ourselves over that one! He’d a sense of humour, Pete had.’

‘Was the name of that client Edward Cockfield?’

Shirley Banks said: ‘I don’t remember.’

‘Yes, you do,’ Gently said. ‘If I’m not pinching you, I want names.’

She pouted. ‘You’re a right copper! All right, it was Cockfield. So what?’

‘Just give me the names – all ten of them.’

She slanted a look at him, muttered something.

‘So there was Groton and this fellow – and the doctor, you’d know about him. Then there was Lady Buxhall, the doctor’s girlfriend, just a tart who’d married rich. And Bert Drinkstone, he’s a magistrate – got a taste for being flogged. And the chemist – he was a lark! – and Joe Leyton who runs the Majestic.

‘Then there was Sayers, he was a nance job, and Gwen Eliegh and Gertie Wratting. Those perishing women were oonch-fanciers.

‘What are you blushing about, feller?’

Perkins said agitatedly: ‘She must be lying! I know those ladies very well . . . Mrs Wratting in particular. She’s honorary president of the Dining Club.’

Shirley Banks gave a gritty chuckle. ‘Where have you been hiding, sonny?’ she asked.

‘She’s a public figure—!’

‘She’s a randy old bitch. Pete had to come in and drag her away from me.’

‘And Miss Eliegh is chairman—’

‘She gave me a pain. You’d laugh if I told you what her game is.’

‘You can’t believe what this woman is saying . . . Mr Drinkstone too. It’s unthinkable!’

Gently sighed, hunched weary shoulders. Perhaps he should have left Perkins out of it! Somewhere, in any statement by Shirley Banks, fresh Abbotsham heads were going to roll . . .

‘Right,’ he said. ‘That’ll do, Miss Banks.’

‘Man, I’ll give details if he wants them.’

‘Get back to the statement.’

She leered at Perkins. Perkins turned his back, stood twisting his fingers.

‘So that was Pete’s connection here,’ Miss Banks said. ‘We were running it about a year. Pete knew how to keep them cool, nobody made him any trouble. Then something happened that put a scare in me. I spotted a bloke on my tail. He was checking who I spoke to, where I was picking up the envelopes.’