Maxim Jakubowski - The Best British Mysteries III

‘Is that it?’

‘No, of course it’s not. Fill her right up, for heaven’s sake.’

In other circumstances Gribby would have tried flirting with her because she was undeniably a good-looking girl. Now he could hardly restrain himself from hitting her. Slowly she pumped another gallon up and down, then another, his eyes on her, willing her to hurry. He looked away from her only once and then it was because some movement at the back of his car caught his attention. He swung round and there was Sonny standing there, his hand on the big black luggage trunk. The two men’s eyes met. Sonny returned the stare for a few moments then shrugged and moved away, as if he’d been admiring the car. It took Molly the best part of ten minutes to get the indicator to the ten-gallon figure and by that time Gribby was nearly gibbering with anger. He shoved some money at her, not waiting for change, then accelerated out of the yard in a cloud of dust and exhaust. Tick shouted after him as he went, ‘Hey, your trunk’s undone.’ One of the straps round it was unbuckled and flapping. But the man at the wheel couldn’t have heard because he didn’t stop. Forty-five minutes later, with Sonny driving, the repaired Rover followed more sedately. Sonny made sure that nobody saw him touch Molly’s hand or heard his whispered ‘Thank you’.

The Rover turned on to the road past the common. ‘We’ll stop at the phone kiosk,’ Sonny said. ‘Let them know we’re on our way again.’

He slowed down as they came alongside it, almost stopped then accelerated away so clumsily that he almost stalled the engine. From the back the Rooster said, ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing wrong, Rooster. Just there’s somebody using it already. We’ll find another one further along.’

Sonny and Enoch exchanged glances and from there on Sonny drove so smoothly that the Rooster slept most of the way to London.

‘So Gribby drives off in a hurry,’ the inspector said. ‘Less than an hour later Rooster’s lot notice a man in a telephone kiosk. An hour or more after that, Miss Davitt finds Tod dead and her father sends the apprentice to tell you.’

‘And I got there as soon as I could,’ Constable Price said. When Tick arrived, breathless, on an old bicycle, he’d been at a farm on the far side of his own village, investigating a case of ferret stealing. His wife sent his son running for him and he cycled from there as fast as a man could go on a police bike to the telephone kiosk in Tadley Gate.

‘And judging by your report, you decided at once that whoever battered, him over the head didn’t do it in the kiosk?’

Outside Price regretted giving in to the temptation to be clever in his report, but couldn’t go back on it now.

‘There’d have been blood splashed all over the place, sir. As it was, he’d just bled down the back of his suit and onto the floor.’

‘Yes. So our assumption is that he managed to stagger to the phone kiosk from wherever Gribby hit him with the iron bar, probably intending to call for help.’

‘You think that’s what happened, sir?’

‘Speaks for itself. Then there was that trail of blood you noticed from the road to the kiosk, as if he’d dragged himself the last few yards. So they quarrel – probably over the money they’re getting paid for spying on the Rooster – Gribby bashes Tod over the head, leaves him for dead and scuttles back to London as soon as he’s got a full tank of petrol. Only Tod comes round and has just enough life left in him to make it as far as the phone kiosk but not enough to pick up the telephone.’

Constable Price thought about it in his slow rural way. ‘So that’s it then, sir?’

‘Yes, but we’re never going to pin it on Gribby unless you turn up a witness. So work on it and keep me informed.’

The inspector went back to his car – smaller and more battered than either the boxer’s or the villain’s – and headed back thankfully for the town. Constable Price went to feed his hens. But he couldn’t stop thinking about the girl watching a dead man in the phone kiosk.

When the Rover left her father’s yard Molly was in a world she didn’t recognise any more. Her father and Tick were tidying their tools away, pleased with their day, talking about the Rooster. The murmur of their voices, the small metallic clanks, the lingering petrol smell, should have been familiar but she felt as if she’d been put down in a foreign country. Probably a nice enough country if you got to know it, but nothing that had any connection with her. From habit, she went in the kitchen, put a saucepan of water on the stove for her father to wash, boiled a couple of eggs for his tea since their visitors had eaten everything else. But as soon as she’d finished washing up she let her feet take her towards the common and the telephone kiosk. It was the link between herself and Sonny. She didn’t believe that the combined magic of her father’s motor mania and the telephone kiosk would bring him here and let him go again as if nothing had happened. The squeeze of her hand surely meant he’d be back – and how would he let her know that if not by telephone? Her heart gave a jolt when, from a distance, she saw a man in the kiosk. But it wasn’t Sonny, nothing like him, just a smaller man in a darker suit. Nobody she recognised, but on this day of wonders another stranger more or less made no difference. She sat on the steps of the war memorial, thinking about Sonny while the shadows of a summer afternoon grew long on the grass around her. The cooling of the air made her realise that time had passed and the stranger was still there in the phone kiosk. Curiosity, then increasing alarm, made her hurry toward it.

Once Tadley Gate knew that the body was a stranger’s everybody got on with haymaking before the weather broke. When the news got out that the dead man had been a criminal from London some people in the village implied that it was the fault of the phone kiosk and the petrol pump, which would naturally attract people like that. Once the police had finished in the kiosk a woman who usually did the cleaning in chapel took it on herself to scrub and disinfect it and people went back to not using it quite normally. Davy Davitt and Tick were more interested in the Rooster’s chances for the Empire and the World titles. Constable Price sometimes discussed it with them. He’d taken to dropping in at the forge quite often these days. One day he had to go to the privy and noticed a rusty horseshoe with a sharp edge lying on the earth outside. It seemed a funny place for a horseshoe, but it was a farrier’s after all. Some of the bushes had been pushed back as if something heavy had landed there not long ago, but then you got boys fighting all over the place. Constable Price tried hard, but he couldn’t stop thinking. As for Molly, she strolled on the common within earshot of the telephone in the long evenings but apart from that got on with the cooking and accounts like any sensible girl. Then, one day when she was scrubbing a frying pan, two boys arrived running from the common with just enough breath between them to get out the news.

‘Miss, you’re wanted on the telephone.’

She dropped the pan and ran to the kiosk with her apron still on.

‘Miss Davitt?’ Sonny’s voice, distant and metallic but perfectly clear. He had to say it again before she managed to whisper a ‘yes’ into the receiver. He apologised for not telephoning before. He’d had to stay in London with the Rooster and Uncle Enoch but would be driving himself home the next day and wondered if he might call in. ‘Yes,’ she said again. For her first telephone call it was hardly a big speaking part, but it seemed to be all that was needed.