Alan Hunter: Gently Go Man

‘About in the nines,’ Elton said.

‘And you saw the lamp?’ asked Setters.

‘Yuh, I nearly hit it,’ Elton said.

‘Go on,’ said Setters.

‘Then I saw the bike,’ Elton said. ‘So I hauled up and made a turn. I rode back to look at the bike.’

‘Only the bike?’ asked Setters.

‘That was all I’d seen,’ Elton said. ‘I didn’t see Johnny then. He was back down the road. I got a torch, I had a look. I could see it was his bike. And the engine was hot. I burned my hand on the engine.’

‘So?’ Setters said.

‘I could see the marks,’ Elton said. ‘The verge was scuffed up for yards, I kept walking and walking. Then I found the spot where he’d busted off. Betty’s handbag was lying there. But I’d gone right past him. He was right over in the fence.’

‘Then?’ Setters said.

Elton hesitated. He was making sweat.

‘Then I searched along,’ he said.

‘What did you do when you found him?’ Setters said.

‘I–I looked him over,’ Elton said.

‘How do you mean, you looked him over?’

‘I looked him over. He might have been alive. I had to look,’ Elton said.

‘And he wasn’t alive?’ Setters asked.

‘He was all smashed up,’ Elton said. ‘Head smashed. Legs. Everything. Blood. I got in it. Didn’t see it. You never know what it’s like. I couldn’t stand it.’ He gave a sob.

‘So you decided he was dead,’ Setters said.

‘Yuh, he couldn’t have been alive.’

‘And you did what?’ Setters asked.

‘I looked for Betty. I had to look.’

‘Go on,’ Setters said.

‘She wasn’t so far. She’d come off sooner. She was near the place he’d busted off. In some bushes, she was.’

‘And she was still alive,’ Setters said.

‘I didn’t know,’ Elton said. ‘If I’d known I’d have done something. She looked the same. Smashed. Blood. I didn’t go too close to her.’

‘Friend of yours, wasn’t she?’ Setters asked.

‘Yuh. Friend of mine, she was.’

‘So you didn’t check she was alive?’

‘I didn’t want to go close,’ Elton said.

Setters leaned back in his chair. His eyes were hard on Elton.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘we’ll hear what the big hero did about this. He finds a crash by the roadside. He finds two of his pals smashed up. What does big hero do? Just keep telling me, Elton.’

Elton shrank a little more.

‘I was scared,’ he said.

‘Scared of what?’ asked Setters. ‘They were dead, you tell me?’

It’s always scary out there at night,’ said Elton. ‘All those trees and rough country. All of a sudden I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t. I’d had enough.’

‘Sounds good,’ Setters said.

‘It’s the level. I’m telling you. I was scared. It hit me sudden. Seemed they were still hanging about there.’

‘So you drove in and told us.’

‘Yuh, I could have done,’ Elton said.

‘But you didn’t. And why didn’t you?’

‘I saw the truck coming,’ Elton said.

‘So what?’ Setters said.

‘I saw it coming,’ Elton repeated. ‘Back there by the tree, I saw its lights come up and over. So I knew it would get reported. I didn’t need to tell you. I ran down back to my bike. I was scared. I went home.’

‘You were scared all right,’ said Setters.

‘I told you I was. I couldn’t take it.’

Setters made a face at Ralphs. Ralphs shrugged his shoulders. Setters rubbed the side of his cheek as though he were testing it for a shave.

‘And you didn’t bust Lister, you say. Nor you didn’t see it done.’

‘No,’ Elton said.

‘Though he pinched your girl.’

‘That wasn’t anything,’ Elton said.

‘You wanted to pitch him for it, didn’t you?’

‘It wasn’t like this,’ Elton said. ‘We’re always pitching. It don’t count. A pitch don’t count for much with us.’

‘You carry a blade, sonny boy?’

‘We don’t go for blades,’ Elton said.

Setters rubbed his cheek again.

‘Would a jury buy it?’ he asked Ralphs.

Ralphs gave another shrug. He doodled a little in the margin of his notebook. Setters kept on rubbing his cheek. At last he pressed the button on his desk. A constable entered. Setters pointed to Elton.

‘Take his lordship back to the cells,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to cogitate on his future.’

When he was gone Setters said to Ralphs: ‘He’s good, that kid. You could almost believe him.’

‘I was believing him mostly,’ Ralphs said.

‘Yeah, mostly,’ said Setters. ‘Just mostly, that’s all.’

He lifted the phone and began to dial.

‘We’ll have the Old Man in on this,’ he said. ‘I had that charge lined up on a hair-trigger, but I’ve got the seconds. I don’t feel like pulling it.’

FURTHER POLICE APPEAL FOR WITNESSES WAS JOHN LISTER MURDERED? ELTON RETURNS HOME POLICE SEARCH FOR MISSING WITNESS LAURENCE ELTON DISAPPEARS VANISHES AFTER QUESTIONING YARD CALLED IN LISTER CASE SUPT. GENTLY TAKES OVER NO TRACE OF ELTON

There was a kid killed on that road, man, and the screws made a big deal of it. Threw the curve that one of his pals had busted him off the verge. How square can you get, man. They wouldn’t never understand it. You can’t sit in a screw-shop explaining the touch to the screws. But that jeebie wasn’t busted, you can take it from me, man. He was over the ton when he went, he was getting it, that’s all. A big-shot screw came down from the Smoke to try to make the curve stick, but he didn’t fool nobody, not even himself. Johnny Lister was the kid’s name, man, and he died on the road.

The black Rover 75 was coming up the road from Castlebridge and it slowed by the Gallows Tree and pulled over on to the rough near it. The driver sat for a moment smoking his pipe, a big man with big shoulders, dressed in a casual dark suit and wearing a dull coppery tie. He was in his early fifties, his face was rugged, archetypal. The mouth was full and the jaw squared. The nose was shapely and strong. The eyebrows were heavy, a little greyed. His hair was mid-brown, greying too. His eyes were hazel and had a mild expression. He was Superintendent Gently. He was from Homicide.

He got out of the car and walked over to the tree. It had been a very large ash tree but now it was dead and greyly sere. The ground beneath and round it was bare and was scattered with paper and rubbish, and there were many tyre-marks and signs that meals had been eaten there. It was on the crest of a slight ridge and the view was extensive on all sides. The dark brecklands stretched about it, softly undulating to their horizons. The brecklands were a sandy, stony waste, and they were dark because of the scurfy heath. Their levels were broken by scattered fir trees, sparse, sand-polished, melancholy.

He stroked the bark of the tree, stood looking down the straight road. It was nearly noon of an October day and there was plenty of traffic on the road. Every few moments came the buzz of a car separating itself from the anonymous stream, then dying back into it again to be replaced by another. There were trucks, too, heavy articulateds, groaning by like tall ships. And motorcycles, several of those: he counted eleven in fifteen minutes. All the long five miles the traffic was scuttling and burrowing and glittering. As far as the black line of Latchford Chase. As far as the cross on Setters’ sketch map.

He knocked out his pipe on the tree and glanced back at the road he had travelled. An Austin-Healey was shooting towards him, but after that was a break of half a mile. He got back in the car, started the engine, waited some moments for the road to empty. He eased the clutch, drew away, slid through the gears, gave her the gas. The Healey was well ahead now, too far for him to hope to catch it, but the road behind it was clear and he could let the 75 rip. It went up fast on the downward grade. He was into the eights very quickly. Soon he was flickering into the nines, which the 75 didn’t often reach. Her engine was straining a very little, the slipstream boomed in his ears. She was steering lighter than he liked it, but not enough to cause him worry. It was fast, very fast. She was right up in the nines. The Healey wasn’t losing him now, he was sitting tight at his distance.