Alan Hunter - Gently Go Man

Gently hung the sheet over his teapot, went on lading some toast with marmalade. He hadn’t slept any too well, he’d caught a headache from Deeming’s Sauternes. Then, arriving downstairs, he’d seen with surprise that his interview with Deeming had ‘made’ a morning paper. More, it was Deeming himself who had reported it and whose name was given in the byline.

SUPT. GENTLY’S NIGHT OUT WITH THE JEEBIES

For a little review contributor, Deeming had a nice journalistic touch. The story that followed was slightly mocking, showed Gently as a bumbling father-figure: not explicitly, of course, but by a number of subtle, overt touches. The piece had also been made a vehicle to give some of Deeming’s ideas an airing. He must have wasted no time on the effort, but gone at his typewriter the moment Gently left.

‘I saw the write-up,’ Setters said, his glance moving to Gently’s paper. ‘I should have warned you about Dicky Deeming; he’s never slow to place a story.’

‘I’m used to it,’ Gently grunted.

‘But I should have warned you,’ Setters said. ‘The way he writes it he was stringing you along, he asked you up to clinch his story.’

‘What else did Ralphs get?’ Gently asked.

‘That was most of it,’ Setters said. ‘The rest is down there in the report. I’d say that the girl didn’t want to pass the sticks.’

Gently ate and read. The report was lengthy and detailed. Ralphs had started near the Ford Road site and worked conscientiously back into the town. He came to the Kummin Kafe, where the serviette was matched: there’d been a container of them on the counter near a plastic sandwich-case. Ralphs had seen Greenstone in a private room, had got an account from him of the Tuesday tea-break. As usual, Greenstone had been rushed off his feet, so he hadn’t had much leisure to observe specific goings-on. Yes, there were some girls from Spalding and Skinner’s, and also from a dozen other offices; some fellows, too, clerks and assistants, he didn’t particularly remember whom. He remembered Lister, however, because he came in regularly, and then his picture had been in the paper when ‘all this was going on’. Lister had been wearing overalls with a jacket thrown over them, he’d gone straight to a corner table where a girl was sitting with a fellow. The fellow had also been wearing overalls. Greenstone thought he’d left when Lister arrived. Lister remained some minutes talking to the girl, and Greenstone’s impression was that there was some sort of an argument. Anyway, Lister took something from a tub-bag which was stood on the table, and the girl said: ‘No Johnny, they’re mine,’ or something similar. Later Lister had bought a cup of tea and had taken a serviette from the container, and that was all Greenstone had noticed. He didn’t see if they left together. Ralphs had shown him a photograph of Elton and asked him if that was the other fellow. Greenstone wasn’t certain, nor could he identify a photograph of Betty Turner. Why was he certain it was the Tuesday? There was a delivery from Mowbray’s, the pie people. Greenstone had been putting pies in the case when Lister bought his tea and took the serviette.

Gently checked through it twice before handing it back to Setters.

‘You think it was Elton?’ Setters asked. ‘Would he be the one who passed her the reefers?’

Gently shrugged. ‘She seemed only just to have got them,’ he said. ‘A pity Greenstone can’t remember what went on between her and the other fellow.’

‘If it was Elton,’ Setters said, ‘it helps the way I’ve been seeing it. The sticks may or may not come into it, but that meeting and argument are significant. Let’s say that Elton went to meet her there, that he knows she’s cooling off from Lister. He tries to talk her round to ditching Lister and maybe into going with him, Elton, to the jazz session. But Betty won’t have it, she’s still sticking to Lister, then Lister arrives and Elton goes off in a paddy. Lister doesn’t like it either, he has an argument about it with Betty, and in the end he grabs her sticks — maybe because she should have had some for him. That way we’ve got some background to what happened outside the milk bar in Castlebridge. Elton is bitter, he tries to quarrel with Lister, and later he rides him off the road.’

‘It hangs together,’ Gently admitted. ‘But it might have been two other people in the cafe.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Setters said. ‘It fits together too neatly. We wanted a bit more to build on than just that incident outside the milk bar, and this gives it to us. We’ll get the truth of it when the girl can talk again.’

‘If she’ll talk about it,’ Gently said. ‘She sounded as though she wanted to protect Elton.’

‘She’ll see it differently,’ Setters said, ‘when I can show her the case against Elton.’

Gently poured a last cup, began to stoke his pipe.

‘Any news about Elton come in?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Setters said, frowning. ‘It’s beginning to bother me, that is. He’s been adrift for nearly a week now, and it’s not as though he was a professional. I rang London like you told me and had another talk with them this morning. They’ve had a check-up in Bethnal, but Elton’s not been seen there. A kid on the run with no money, I don’t like that one little bit.’

‘Meaning,’ Gently said.

‘Well…’ Setters opened his hands. ‘You get hunches that don’t add up. I keep starting to think that Elton’s dead.’

‘Mmn.’ Gently lit the pipe. He broke the match into a tray.

It doesn’t add up,’ Setters repeated. ‘But I can’t get the idea out of my head. If I’m right, then it’s suicide, and that could hardly go undiscovered. I don’t know, I’m a pushover for hunches. But I wish we could find that kid.’

‘You’ve checked on his pals?’ Gently asked.

‘Yes,’ Setters said. ‘We’ve checked twice over. Latchford’s a small place, it’s isolated. I’ll swear on oath that he’s not in Latchford.’

‘How about outside it?’ Gently asked.

‘Take a look at the map,’ Setters said. ‘It’s open country for ten miles round, except the Chase, which the rangers watch. The rest we’ve tackled, every cottage and farmyard — and there’s precious few of either. No, he’s out of the Latchford area. Unless he’s pushing up daisies somewhere.’

‘He’ll turn up,’ Gently said. He pushed back his chair, rose, and stretched. ‘I think I’ll talk to that milk bar,’ he said. ‘What was the name and address again?’

‘The Ten Spot Milk Bar,’ Setters said. ‘In Prince’s Road. Not far from the station.’

‘In the meantime,’ Gently said, ‘we might take a search warrant to Elton’s house. His sister has probably cleaned up the traces, but we can look. There’ll be no harm in that.’

He drove out of the Sun yard, where the stagecoaches had wheeled in, across the bridge over the River Latch and past a dull straggle of flint-built dwellings. A fingerpost pointed to Castlebridge, twenty-four miles, then he was out on the wide brecks with a reef of the Chase spreading in from the right.

It was a heavy October day, the sun hazy in a white sky. He swept by still-leaved, wiry birches, and later past coppery oaks and yellow horse-chestnuts. At Oldmarket, thirteen miles from Latchford, a string of race-horses trotted on the heath. Their coats looked liquid in the soft-filtered sun and two of their riders were wearing pink and blue shirts. Through the town the grandstands appeared on the right, heavy-shadowed, lonely, far-distant from the road. A few miles further on lay a military aerodrome with planes standing shaggy in dew-drenched covers.

Castlebridge was coming to life as he drove through the out-streets. Vans were busy, there were reckless droves of starved undergraduates on bicycles. Buses, filled with gown workers, were sedately threading their way to the centre, and people were hurrying along the street which led from the station. Gently swung into Prince’s Road, drove slowly down it. It was a wide road lined with a mixture of residential and commercial properties. He noticed a Victorian Gothic church, a red-brick Veterinary Institute, a garage and a tyre-store interspersed among rooming houses and small hotels. The Ten Spot Milk Bar was nearer the town end of the road. It lay between a surplus store on one side and a furniture store on the other. Across the road from it was a free car park which stretched over to a street on the far side. Gently drove into it and parked, got out, crossed the street.