Alan Hunter - Gently Does It

Inspector Hansom went about his duties, a wounded soul. He hadn’t had much sleep. Into the small hours of the morning he had been at Fisher’s flat and, at the super’s suggestion, all the area within a key’s throw of the flat, searching for the blasted key that had to be there and wasn’t… as dawn had begun to show far off down the Yar valley he had been assailed by unpolicemanlike thoughts. There was a firm in the city who would turn out an identical key for a couple of bob… and wasn’t it worth a couple of bob to get one’s head down? At the same time, if that key really was missing… and you had to admit that Gently was a clever bastard… Hansom lit a bad-tasting cigar and breathed expensively towards the dawn.

Leaming, well-dressed and impressive, had given his brief evidence to the court with precision and conviction. One felt that here was a man of ability, a man who could handle affairs of moment: a man to be trusted implicitly. The Coroner treated him with deference. As he concluded his short statement he glanced round the court and catching Gently’s eye, smiled to him winningly. Gently smiled also, but it would have been more difficult to categorize Gently’s smile.

A police car still stood in Paradise Alley, lone and smart amongst the derelict houses and blank, shabby walls. Gently nodded to the constable who stood by it.

‘Have they had any luck?’

‘Not so far, sir, but they’re just taking the floor up.’

Gently clicked his tongue. ‘They won’t find it there.’

‘There’s a crack where it might have slipped through, sir… they’ve found the head off an old hammer and a threepenny bit.’

‘Well… tell them not to spend it all at once.’

‘Ha, ha! Yes, sir.’

Gently turned away to the row of empty windows opposite. No fierce little head bobbed up to greet him, but then, it was probably Superman’s bedtime. He shoved open a yawing door and went through. The floor above had caved in long since, leaving a rusty fireplace hanging on the wall in hearthless nakedness. The back of the house was a collapsed pile of rubble. Gently climbed over it and looked down at the desolation below. Walls disintegrating, sagging roofs, piles of rubble surmounted by nettles and ragwort… right down to Queen Street, where the shabby thoroughfare arrested the ruins with a narrow bulwark of vitality. He shook his head and picked his way cautiously through a fragment-strewn yard.

‘Gotcher!’ rang out a triumphant shout behind him. Gently put up his hands and came to a standstill. ‘Turn around!’ commanded the voice, ‘and don’t try any funny stuff on the Cactus Kid!’ Gently turned around. ‘Oh… it’s you, mister…’

Gently nodded. ‘Yes, it’s me… can I put my hands down?’

Superman, alias the Cactus Kid, wrinkled his nose in a frown. ‘Guess you can, mister… though you look mighty like Bad Dan from behind. He’s the worsest rustler that ever hit these parts, and I’m sure going to get him one of these days!’

‘It’s time you hit the hay,’ said Gently, lowering his hands, ‘there’s a sheriff’s posse up the alley. They’ll keep watch out for Bad Dan till you get on the trail again. You come along back to the ranch with me.’ He took the Cactus Kid’s grimy paw and led the way round a lurching segment of wall towards Mariner’s Lane. ‘This is heap bad country, pardner,’ he added, ‘you should find up a better range somewhere…’

The Cactus Kid trotted along beside him happily. ‘Mister, they got on to Red Hawk at last… I knew about him a long time ago. Did they find all the gold he’d got hidden away?’

‘Guess they did, kid.’

‘Gee, mister, that must’ve been exciting!’

‘Waal… it had its moments.’

‘I sure do wish I’d been around about then.’

Gently looked down at his small companion. ‘Weren’t you up here yesterday?’ he asked.

‘No, mister, not me.’

‘How come, pardner?’

‘Someone gave me two bob to spend on the fair… but it wasn’t going in the afternoon. So I went round Woolies instead. That’s where I bought my six-shooter, mister — see here!’ He withdrew his hand from Gently’s and held up a new toy gun. Gently examined it gravely, spinning the magazine with a stubby finger. ‘Clean, bright and lightly oiled,’ he murmured, ‘that’s a pretty little shooting-iron, pardner… here’s half a buck to buy it some ammo.’

‘Gee… mister!’ The Cactus Kid’s eyes gleamed as he felt the heavy coin with its rough milled edge. Then he tugged back on Gently’s hand. ‘Mister… would you mind if I spent some of it on a special belt with a holster?’

They came down Mariner’s Lane, Gently instinctively steering outwards at the spot where the masonry had been aimed at him. Queen Street was lit dully in the twilight. Across the way the Huysmann house reared more blankly and detachedly than ever, white and looming in the blueness of a mercury lamp. ‘Whereabouts is your bunk-house, pardner?’ enquired Gently.

‘Just here, mister — one of those in the row.’

Gently paused in the act of dismissing him. ‘Who gave you the two bob yesterday?’ he queried.

‘Oh, it was a man.’

‘Somebody you know?’

‘No… he wasn’t anybody. He came down the Lane when I was keeping watch on Red Hawk.’

‘When was that?’

‘I don’t know… it wasn’t tea-time.’

‘Coming down the lane, was he?’

‘That’s right, mister. I was just on the corner there, keeping watch down the alley. He give me the two bob to go on the fair… only it wasn’t going in the afternoon.’

Gently bent closer to the little freckled face. ‘This man, what was he like?’

‘He was just a man…’

‘Did you notice if he was carrying a bag?’

‘That’s right, mister — he’d got a bag, one of those bulgy ones.’

‘And did he go up the alley?’

‘I don’t know… he might have done.’

Gently stood back again, brooding, gazing into the far distance towards Railway Bridge. The Cactus Kid fidgeted from one foot to the other. ‘It wasn’t anyone, mister… it was just a man.’

‘Which way did you go to the fairground?’ asked Gently abruptly.

‘I went up the lane and along the top… but it wasn’t going.’

‘Did you see a racing car standing at the top — a real fast one, painted red?’

‘One that could go a hundred miles an hour?’

‘About that… maybe faster.’

‘Oh yes, I saw that one, mister — it had got an aeroplane on the front — I blew the propeller round!’

A slow smile spread over Gently’s face and he felt in his pocket for his bag of peppermint creams. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘take the lot… but don’t eat them all tonight or you’ll have nightmares. There’s just one other thing before you go… I suppose you haven’t found a key up there round the alley?’

The Cactus Kid shook his head vigorously.

‘Ah!’ sighed Gently, ‘we mustn’t strain providence too far, must we, pardner?’

The front doorbell of the Huysmann house was engulfed afar off, giving back to the ringer not the faintest vibration to encourage him in his practices: one rang, and waited unhopefully. Eventually Gently heard the soft pad of feet down the hall and the shooting of’ the bolt. It was Susan who melted in the doorway.

‘Oh, Inspector…!’

Gently remained on the step. ‘I just want some information,’ he said.

Susan’s blue eyes chided him softly. ‘Won’t you come in, Inspector? Miss Gretchen has gone to bed, and Mrs Turner has gone to tell her sister about everything… it’s lonely in here, on your own.’

‘I don’t think I’ll come in at the moment…’

‘Inspector, I thought you were wonderful in court… absolutely wonderful.’