Alan Hunter - Gently Does It

‘You been asking questions about me?’ he demanded.

Gently stopped, stared at him stolidly.

‘Was that kid telling you a pack of lies?’

Gently remained silent.

‘They aren’t going to believe a kid. Nobody’ll believe a kid — not that kid, anyhow. They had him in the home once. He’s cracked.’

Gently said: ‘Are you just going back to your flat?’

Fisher eyed him nastily. ‘Suppose I am. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?’

Gently said: ‘I’d like to come in and look it over.’

‘Oh, would you? And s’pose I don’t like policemen coming into my flat — what are you going to say to that?’

Gently shrugged. ‘It’s up to you,’ he said. ‘I could phone down for a search-warrant, if I thought it was worth it.’

Fisher swayed a little, his scowl deepening. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘all right. You come in, Mr Chief Inspector Gently — you come in, and see where you get then.’

He led the way down the alley, Gently following a few paces in the rear. As they drew opposite the flat there was a warning cry from Superman. ‘Watch out, mister! I’ve got the ray on him, but he’s a desperate character!’ Fisher made a threatening movement and Superman’s face and ray-gun disappeared with great promptness. Fisher unlocked the door. There was a short section of dingy passage leading to a steep flight of steps. At the top of these was a dark landing from which opened three doors. Fisher threw them wide. ‘There, Mr Chief Inspector Gently,’ he said, ‘go in and find some clues.’

Gently glanced around him impassively. The first room was a kitchen, combining, apparently, the duties of wash-room. The second was the bedroom, narrow, unornamented, its furniture an iron bedstead, a chair and a varnished chest-of-drawers. The third room was the living-room. It contained three chairs, a couch, a cupboard, a table and a stool. Its walls, from damp patches in which pieces of plaster had fallen, were decorated with coloured drawings of tight-skinned nudes taken from American magazines. Several nude photographs adorned the mantelpiece. The table stood under the window. On it stood several built-up scale models of aircraft, together with an untidy assemblage of balsa wood, tubes of cement, coloured tissue, piano wire and odd-shaped parts, amongst which lay a blunt-nosed skeleton fuselage. A printed sheet of balsa, partly cut out, was at the front of the table. Beside it lay an open cut-throat razor.

‘Go on,’ jeered Fisher, ‘go right in and pull things about — I don’t mind!’

Gently went in and slowly circumnavigated the room, touching nothing. Fisher watched him scowlingly from the doorway. ‘You don’t know anything,’ he said, ‘think you’re so clever, coming from Scotland Yard, but you don’t know a thing.’

Gently paused before the razor.

‘That’s it — have a good look at it! I go out cutting little girls’ throats with that.’

Gently picked it up, tried the blade on his thumb and laid it down again. He turned and regarded Fisher distantly. ‘What don’t I know?’ he asked.

‘You don’t know anything — that’s what you don’t know. You just think you do!’

‘And what do I think I know?’

‘You think you know I wasn’t here when I said I was here, for a start.’

Gently said nothing.

‘You think maybe I was at the house when it was done, don’t you?’

Gently raised his eyebrows slightly.

‘You think I heard them quarrelling and nipped into the other room and got a chair and watched it done — you think I could tell you how he got the knife off the wall and stabbed the old man as he was at the safe. That’s what you think you know, Mr Chief Inspector Gently — that’s what it is. But you don’t know nothing really, nothing at all! And you’re never going to know nothing, for all your cleverness.’

Gently took out a peppermint cream without moving his gaze from Fisher.

‘You think you can find out things that Inspector Hansom can’t find out. You’ve been bloody clever, haven’t you? But there’s as clever people about as you, don’t you forget it. They know how much you can prove and how much you can’t, and that’s not a damn sight and never will be.’

Gently said: ‘I might be able to prove that you’re the father of Gretchen Huysmann’s child.’

Fisher’s mouth hung open. ‘You’ll what?’ he gabbled.

Gently chewed his peppermint cream.

Fisher came closer. He thrust his face close to Gently’s. There was anger and fear in his eyes. ‘You’re lying!’ he spluttered, ‘she isn’t going to have a child!’

Gently chewed on.

‘If she told you that, it’s a lie — it’s nothing to do with me!’

Gently swallowed.

‘Anyhow, they can’t prove things like that, not really. You’re trying to trap me, that’s what it is. You can’t prove anything, so you’re trying to make me say something by lying.’

Gently smiled at him seraphically.

Fisher breathed hard. ‘You don’t know anything!’ he repeated fiercely, ‘you only think you know!’

Gently placed a hand firmly on Fisher’s chest and pushed him to one side. ‘Think about it,’ he said, ‘take an hour off and think about it.’

He went down the stairs. From the top Fisher shouted after him: ‘You can think what you like… you can’t prove it!’

Gently completed his climb to Burgh Street and stood for some minutes by the bombed-site, partly to see the view and partly to get his breath back. A steep climb like that came as a warning that retirement was not so very far ahead. And then, he thought, I’ll buy a cottage somewhere, quite away from all superintendents with bad cases of murder, and fish… Having got his breath, he set off down the hill again. Near the bottom, as he was passing the ruined shell of an old factory-building, he heard a slight movement high above his head. He jumped without stopping to look. At the same moment a fragment of masonry about the size of a football crashed on to the pavement where he had been walking, bounced once and trundled away down the steep slope.

Gently stood motionless, pressed against the wall. There was a sudden clambering and rush of footsteps on the other side. Up the hill, down the hill the wall stretched blindly, completely without access. The footsteps died away in the distance.

Gently picked up the fragment of masonry and placed it carefully at the side of the pavement. It weighed nearly half a hundred-weight. ‘You can think what you like,’ he quoted to himself, ‘but you don’t know nothing… and you can’t prove it.’ He fed himself a peppermint cream and walked on down the Lane.

Alan Hunter

Gently Does It

T HE LATER LUNCH-TIME fly-sheets carried the news: PETER HUYSMANN CAUGHT. It was scanned by typists in snack-bars and discussed by housewives over their lunch-time coffee. The heavy, red-faced man who sold papers outside the bank shouted: ‘Huysmann Taken Off Ship — Latest!’ — and sold the thick sheaf under his arm as quickly as he could take the money. Two painters on a cradle high above the Walk heard his cry. ‘Ted, get you down after a paper,’ said the elder one, ‘I used to know young Huysmann when he was knee-high to a tin of paint.’ Ted went down the scaffolding like a monkey, but by the time he got to the pavement the papers were all sold. So he had to go round to the door of the printing shop and wait while the grumbling machines flapped out a fresh, warm-smelling edition.

‘ CAUGHT WHILE FLEEING COUNTRY ’ ran the revised headline, ‘ PETER HUYSMANN ON DUTCH SHIP BOUND FOR AMSTERDAM: Intercepted by Police at Haswick.’ It continued: ‘Peter Johann Huysmann, 28, son of the murdered Norchester timber-merchant, was discovered this morning hiding in the Dutch motor-vessel Zjytze, which was returning to its home port of Amsterdam after discharging a cargo of timber at Norchester. Wanted by the police for questioning in connection with the death of his father, Huysmann was discovered concealed in a hold when the vessel was intercepted and searched by the Yar River Police patrol boat at Haswick. Captain Hoochzjy, master of the Zjytze, in a statement to the Norchester City Police, denied all knowledge of the presence of Huysmann on board his vessel. Huysmann was taken to Norchester City Police Station. He was given a meal of bacon and fried sausages in the Police canteen…’ And there was a photograph of Peter in his riding helmet, a bad one, deliberately chosen for its villainousness.