Peter Robinson - Not Safe After Dark

At half past six, I called on Maurice Richards, grateful for his offer of a cup of tea and the chance to rest my aching feet. Maurice and I went back a long time. We had both survived the first war, Maurice with the loss of an arm, and me with permanent facial scarring and a racking cough that comes and goes, thanks to the mustard gas leaking through my mask at the Third Battle of Ypres. We never talked about the war, but it was there, we both knew, an invisible bond tying us close together while at the same time excluding us from so much other, normal human intercourse. Not many had seen the things we had, and thank God for that.

Maurice lit up a Passing Cloud one-handed, then he poured the tea. The seven o’clock news came on the radio, some rot about us vowing to keep fighting until we’d vanquished the foe. It was still very much a war of words at that time, and the more rhetorical the language sounded, the better the politicians thought they were doing. There had been a couple of minor air skirmishes, and the sinking of the Courageous , of course, but all the action was taking place in Poland, which seemed as remote as the moon to most people. Some clever buggers had already started calling it the ‘Bore War’.

‘Did you hear Tommy Handley last night, Frank?’ Maurice asked.

I shook my head. There’d been a lot of hoopla about Tommy Handley’s new radio programme, It’s That Man Again , or ITMA , as people called it. I was never a fan. Call me a snob, but when evening falls I’m far happier curling up with a good book or an interesting talk on the radio than listening to Tommy Handley.

‘Talk about laugh,’ said Maurice. ‘They had this one sketch about the Ministry of Aggravation and the Office of Twerps. I nearly died.’

I smiled. ‘Not far from the truth,’ I said. There were now so many of these obscure ministries, boards and departments involved in so many absurd pursuits – all for the common good, of course – that I had been thinking of writing a dystopian satire. I proposed to set it in the near future, which would merely be a thinly disguised version of the present. So far, all I had was a great idea for the title: I would reverse the last two numbers in the current year, so instead of 1939, I’d call it 1993 . (Well, I thought it was a good idea!)

‘Look, Maurice,’ I said, ‘it’s about young Johnny Critchley. His mother tells me you were the last person to see him.’

‘Oh, aye,’ Maurice said. ‘She were round asking about him not long ago. Still not turned up?’

‘No.’

‘Cause for concern, then.’

‘I’m beginning to think so. What was he doing when you saw him?’

‘Just walking down by the canal, by old Woodruff’s scrapyard.’

‘That’s all?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was he alone?’

Maurice nodded.

‘Did he say anything.’

‘No.’

‘You didn’t say anything to him?’

‘No cause to. He seemed preoccupied, just staring in the water, like, hands in his pockets. I’ve heard what happened to his dad. A lad has to do his grieving.’

‘Too true. Did you see anyone else? Anything suspicious?’

‘No, nothing. Just a minute, though…’

‘What?’

‘Oh, it’s probably nothing, but just after I saw Johnny, when I was crossing the bridge, I bumped into Colin Gormond, you know, that chap who’s a bit… you know.’

Colin Gormond . I knew him all right. And that wasn’t good news; it wasn’t good news at all.

Of all the policemen they could have sent, they had to send Detective bloody Sergeant Longbottom, a big, brutish-looking fellow with a pronounced limp and a Cro-Magnon brow. Longbottom was thick as two short planks. I doubt he could have found his own arse even if someone nailed a sign on it, or detected his way out of an Anderson shelter if it were in his own back yard. But that’s the calibre of men this wretched war has left us with at home. Along with good ones like me, of course.

DS Longbottom wore a shiny brown suit and a Silverhill Grammar School tie. I wondered where he’d got it from; he probably stole it from a schoolboy he caught nicking sweets from the corner shop. He kept tugging at his collar with his pink sausage fingers as we talked in Mary Critchley’s living room. His face was flushed with the heat, and sweat gathered on his thick eyebrows and trickled down the sides of his neck.

‘So he’s been missing since lunchtime, has he?’ DS Longbottom repeated.

Mary Critchley nodded. ‘He went out at about half past ten, just for a walk like. Said he’d be back at twelve. When it got to three… well, I went to see Mr Bash-combe here.’

DS Longbottom curled his lip at me and grunted. ‘Mr Bascombe. Special Constable. I suppose you realize that gives you no real police powers, don’t you?’

‘As a matter of fact,’ I said, ‘I thought it made me your superior. After all, you’re not a special sergeant, are you?’

He looked at me as if he wanted to hit me. Perhaps he would have done if Mary Critchley hadn’t been in the room. ‘Enough of your lip. Just answer my questions.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You say you looked all over for this lad?’

‘All his usual haunts.’

‘And you found no trace of him?’

‘If I had, do you think we’d have sent for you?’

‘I warned you. Cut the lip and answer the questions. This, what’s his name, Maurice Richards, was he the last person to see the lad?’

‘Johnny’s his name. And yes is the answer, as far as we know.’ I paused. He’d have to know eventually, and if I didn’t tell him, Maurice would. The longer we delayed, the worse it would be in the long run. ‘There was someone else in the area at the time. A man called Colin Gormond.’

Mary Critchley gave a sharp gasp. DS Longbottom frowned, licked the tip of his pencil and scribbled something in his notebook. ‘I’ll have to have a word with him,’ he said. Then he turned to her. ‘Recognize the name, do you, ma’m?’

‘I know Colin,’ I answered, perhaps a bit too quickly.

DS Longbottom stared at Mary Critchley, whose lower lip started quivering, then turned slowly back to me. ‘Tell me about him.’

I sighed. Colin Gormond was an oddball. Some people said he was a bit slow, but I’d never seen any real evidence of that. He lived alone and he didn’t have much to do with the locals; that was enough evidence against him for some people.

And then there were the children.

For some reason, Colin preferred the company of the local lads to that of the rest of us adults. To be quite honest, I can’t say I blame him, but in a situation like this it’s bound to look suspicious. Especially if the investigating officer is someone with the sensitivity and understanding of a DS Longbottom.

Colin would take them trainspotting on the hill overlooking the main line, for example, or he’d play cricket with them on the rec, or hand out conkers when the season came. He sometimes bought them sweets and ice creams, even gave them books, marbles and comics.

To my knowledge, Colin Gormond had never once put a foot out of line, never laid so much as a finger on any of the lads, either in anger or in friendship. There had, however, been one or two mutterings from some parents – most notably from Jack Blackwell, father of one of Johnny’s pals, Nick – that it somehow wasn’t right , that it was unnatural for a man who must be in his late thirties or early forties to spend so much time playing with young children. There must be something not quite right in his head, he must be up to something , Jack Blackwell hinted, and as usual when someone starts a vicious rumour, there is no shortage of willing believers. Such a reaction was only to be expected from someone, of course, but I knew it wouldn’t go down well with DS Longbottom. I don’t know why, but I felt a strange need to protect Colin.