Alan Hunter - Gently where the roads go

‘They’re a nice car,’ Wanda said. ‘Not showy, just nice.’

She leaned at the table, looking down at him. She had powdered her face very slightly. She touched her lips with the tip of her tongue and her eyes smiled. She rocked a little towards him. The man with the newspaper rustled the newspaper. Wanda looked sulky, looked towards him.

‘Is there anything I can get you?’ she asked him.

He fumbled the newspaper nervously.

‘I’m just closing,’ Wanda said. ‘If you want anything you’d better ask for it.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing I want.’ He got the newspaper together. Besides the dungarees he wore a khaki shirt and a slouch cap which also seemed new. He rose from the table. He didn’t look towards them. He made for the door. When it closed Wanda went quickly across to it and shot the bolts at the top and bottom. She came back shrugging, laid a hand on Gently’s shoulder. The hand laid still, very light.

‘Is he a regular?’ Gently asked.

‘Him? I’ve never seen him before.’

‘Can I use your phone?’

‘Of course you can. It’s through here, in the parlour.’

She led him behind the curtain and into a small kitchen, switching off the lights in the cafe as she went. From the kitchen a door led left into a larger room which was dimly lit by a low-wattage lamp. The room was carpeted and furnished with a studio couch and three fireside chairs; two tables, a larger and a smaller, a pouffe, a bookcase, an old radiogram. The furniture was not new but it had been of good quality. On the wall hung a photographed nude. The subject of the photograph was Wanda. The telephone stood on the smaller table.

‘There you are. Help yourself. It’s a local call, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Gently said. ‘Offingham Police Station.’

‘Oh, that’s all right, that’s local.’

She leaned her elbows on the table and watched him hook off the number. Her breasts were compressed between her arms and hung enlarged and defined. He was connected to the desk.

‘Gently speaking,’ he said. ‘I want you to trace the owner of a black Mini-Minor, registration number XOL 7397. Yes. Probably from the town. Yes. Everham 86. Otherwise when I come in. Thank you, sergeant.’ He hung up.

‘Is that man wanted for something?’ Wanda asked.

Gently stared at her, shrugged.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘It’s no business of mine. And I’m not in a mood for business, anyway. And now you’ve told me who you are, but don’t think that makes any difference. If I didn’t like you you wouldn’t be in here. I’m not trying to bribe you with my body.’

‘You knew who I was,’ Gently said.

Wanda nodded. ‘Of course I did. And if you want to ask me a lot of questions go ahead, that’s all right by me. But when you’ve done your job…’ Her eyes swam at him. ‘Life isn’t so very long,’ she said. ‘You can waste so much time with the proprieties. And opportunity. That’s what counts.’

Gently puffed. ‘You’re a surprising woman.’

‘Because I say what I mean?’ she asked. ‘But don’t forget that I’m a divorcee, I’ve had all the silliness knocked out of me. It was the corespondent who took that photograph. It was produced in the court.’

‘How long ago?’

‘Oh… fifteen years. I was thirty-six last March.’

‘Where’s your husband?’

‘He’s dead. He was killed in an accident soon after.’

‘Hmm,’ Gently said. ‘Shall I get a warrant, or will you let me search this place?’

‘Don’t be a bloody fool,’ she said. ‘Come and search. I’ll show you round.’

She led him back through the kitchen and into a corridor beyond. She threw open a door on the left and switched on a light in a bare-looking sitting room.

‘That was the residents’ lounge — when we aspired to having residents. Now I just get a few bed-and-breakfasts, and they mostly spend their time in the cafe. I flogged the furniture after the war.’

‘Does it pay, this place?’

‘I hope I don’t look like a millionairess. I break about even after drawing a salary.’

‘Who was that bloke in the dungarees?’

‘You’d better ask him. He’s new here.’

She passed on to an entry. Beyond it were two bathrooms and two toilets. There was also an outer door leading into a concreted yard. On one side of the yard was a fuel shed about one quarter full of small coke, on the other a scullery containing a washing machine, spin dryer, some domestic lumber. Outside the yard, dimly illuminated by a torch Gently shone at it, lay a neglected kitchen garden and some stunted, unpruned fruit trees. He stood listening. He heard a moan of traffic, an owl hooting in the distant fields.

‘You’re about half a mile from the lay-by here. Are you sure you didn’t hear that shooting?’

From behind him she said: ‘If I did, I didn’t notice it.’

‘How was that?’

‘You hear so much of it. There’s Huxford just over there. They often fire a burst when they’re night flying. You get so you don’t pay it any attention.’

‘But this was closer, in a different direction.’

‘It wouldn’t register, indoors,’ she said. ‘And the wind has a lot to do with it, too — sometimes it sounds just over the road.’

‘Was anyone staying here that night?’

‘No.’

‘Isn’t there a path from here to the lay-by?’

She paused. ‘You can get through the fields, but there isn’t what you’d call a path. There’s a gap in the hedge here. I sometimes walk in the fields.’

‘And nobody came that way that night?’

‘No.’

‘An airman?’

‘No. Not an airman.’

‘Nobody left a vehicle standing in your park?’

‘Not after I closed. As far as I know.’

‘How long had that bloke in the dungarees been here?’

‘Most of the evening. And I repeat, I don’t know him.’

‘Let’s go back in.’

They walked side by side, she letting him go through the door first. She closed the door and bolted that also, ran a hand lightly over her dew-wet hair.

‘The rest is all bedrooms.’

She nodded towards the corridor, which passed the entry turned right; traversing the front of the long stroke of the building with a number of doors opening off it to the left. The doors were numbered one to twelve. Gently opened the first of them. Behind it was a room about ten by ten containing a bed, a wardrobe, a dressing-table, two chairs. The wardrobe contained two coat-hangers. The bed was made up but looked flat and unused. The window was ajar but the room smelt stuffy and there was a bloom of dust on the worn buff linoleum.

‘When did you last have a bed-and-breakfast?’

‘Oh.’ She thought about it. ‘Last Tuesday week. There was a driver from Newcastle came in with a puncture and stayed the night. You can see my book.’

‘Which room did he stay in?’

‘He stayed in this room. I only keep a couple of beds made up.’

‘Did Tim Teodowicz ever stay here?’

‘Of course not — why should he? He only lived in Offingham.’

They continued looking at the bedrooms. Only the first six were furnished. Two had double beds without any mattresses. One of the other six had some folding chairs stored in it, one a trunk of old clothes, the rest were empty except for their linoleum and the smell of disuse. None of them had a light bulb of above forty watts.

‘What’s up in the roof?’

‘Oh hell!’ she said. ‘A water tank and a lot of spiders. I wish you knew when you were wasting your time. We’ll have to get a ladder from the shed.’

‘You know Ove Madsen?’ he asked.

‘Vaguely.’

‘Has Madsen ever stayed here?’

‘But he lives in Offingham too,’ Wanda said. ‘They don’t stay here when they’re near home.’