Alan Hunter - Gently Does It

‘And how about the key which wasn’t Fisher’s spare?’

Leaming shrugged his shoulders gracefully. ‘It’s a little puzzling, of course. But the fact that it was missing didn’t seem to affect things much at the inquest… it was such a small point, after all, when the rest of the evidence was so irresistible.’ He leaned right back, tilting the chair, quizzing Gently.

Gently twisted his one hand in the other. ‘You seem to have given this matter a lot of thought…’ he said.

‘I try to help the police to the best of my ability.’

‘There’s just one thing, though.’

Leaming’s eyebrows lifted, almost negligently. ‘Something I’ve overlooked?’

‘You may not have overlooked it, but at the same time you may not have realized its full significance.’

‘Go on,’ said Leaming.

Gently spread his clumsy hands wide open on the top of the table. ‘The case that’s building up against Fisher’s murderer may be good, may be bad… that’s something we shall both find out. But if anything should turn up to suggest that Fisher may not have been the one to kill Huysmann, then that case is going to spring to life overnight.’

Leaming leaned forward off his chair. ‘Such as?’ he demanded.

‘Such as somebody’s alibi springing a leak.’

Leaming went back again, slowly, thoughtfully, the smile grown thin on his face. ‘There’s that, of course…’ he admitted softly, ‘there’s always a possibility of an alibi being cracked.’

Gently rose to his feet and beckoned to a waiter. ‘It’s getting late… I suppose you’re just going?’

Leaming looked up at him lazily. ‘I may go — I may stay on.’

‘I’ll pay my bill at all events… then I’ll be ready, whichever you decide to do.’

Gently had rarely felt so checkmated as he did during the next two days. It was true that the super’s interest had been well and truly roused by the discovery of the key and the handle-frame, but cautious as ever, he had scented all the difficulties that still remained before a credible case could be made out. The main weakness, he pointed out, was Gently’s inability to prove a motive. He could produce no evidence to show that Fisher had been blackmailing Leaming. Without such evidence, there was no logical connection between the handle-frame and Fisher’s death, and hence with Leaming. He agreed that Gently was being very convincing and that he appeared to be on a trail. But Gently had to remember that their own medico ruled out the possibility of murder and he, the super, still felt most inclined to support that viewpoint.

In other words, he thought that Gently had a bee in his bonnet.

Glumly Gently went back over the trail, checking and re-checking, asking the same questions again and getting substantially the same answers. He cornered the tug-skipper in Charlie’s and gave him a grilling, but he would scarcely open his mouth. The ‘Straight Grain’ people had packed up, he said, they weren’t taking any more deliveries. No, he didn’t know where their place had been. No, they didn’t own the quay… it was derelict. Anybody could use it.

Pursuing this line, Gently went down to the quay itself. There was no doubt about its dereliction. Sited between tumble-down warehouses, its rotting piles formed just enough staithe to moor a single barge. Once there had been a shallow pent roof over it, but of this there remained only a couple of beams, dangerous, decorated with willow-herb, and on each side of the run-in to the quay nettles and ragwort cropped hectically. The place was deserted. Gently hailed an old fellow who was tinkering with a hauled-out rowing boat further down the bank. ‘Hi!.. do you know who owns this place?’

The old man put down a can of varnish and came limping along to the dividing fence. He looked Gently over without interest. ‘There int nobody what own it,’ he said.

Gently pointed to the piling. ‘Somebody must have owned it at some time.’

‘Well, there was old Thrower had it… thirty odd year ago. But he never owned it neither. He just come and built that there staithe, and nobody said nothin’ to him, but he never rightly owned it.’

‘And where is Thrower now?’

‘Dead… thirty odd year ago.’

Gently sighed. ‘I suppose you don’t know anything about the people who’ve been using it lately?’

‘No, I don’t know nothin’ about them.’

Of course, if the super would put a fraud man on the books and use his resources for a general check-up, thought Gently bitterly… but then again, suppose they could bring it home to Leaming — there was still nothing to tie Leaming to the main issue. Works managers have feathered their nests before today without necessarily bumping off the proprietor. No: it was no use chasing side-issues. Once a charge was laid, the details would be ferreted out by routine work. And if the charge wasn’t laid, then the details might just as well be forgotten.

Leaving nothing to chance, he plodded across to the Railway Road Football Ground. The car park was as Leaming had described it, between the south end of the ground and the river. There was no direct entry from the park to the ground. One had to return to the road and enter by the turnstiles or by the stand. The surface of the park was cinder-dirt, worn rather thin — dry now, but with plenty of clayey depressions where puddles had been not so long since. Gently came out and went into the ground through the main stand entrance. Nobody enquired his business. Two groundsmen were working in one of the goal-mouths, a third was driving a motor-roller, while three or four City players in tracksuits jog-trotted round the running track. Gently strolled out on to the pitch to where the groundsmen were working. ‘Do you know where I can find the car park attendants?’ he asked.

One of the groundsmen straightened up and surveyed him coolly. ‘Who wants to know?’ he countered.

‘Police.’

‘Why — what’s wrong now?’

Gently shook his head sadly. ‘I just want some information… that’s all.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Are you one of the attendants?’

The groundsman twisted his mouth and spat. ‘I could be,’ he said.

‘Were you on the park last Saturday?’

‘Suppose I was?’

Gently held out his hand in a gesture of non-aggression. ‘I’m not trying to pinch anyone… I just want to know something. Do you remember a red Pashley sports with an aeroplane mascot being parked there?’

‘You mean Mr Leaming’s car?’

‘That’s right — do you know him?’

‘I should do. He’s there often enough.’

‘And his car was there?’

‘Yep.’

Gently paused, comfortably. ‘Whenabouts did it check in?’ he proceeded.

‘I dunno… just before the match.’

‘Did Mr Leaming say or do anything that he didn’t usually say or do?’

‘Well…’ The groundsman looked puzzledly at Gently, trying to decide what was behind it all. ‘He talked to me about the team changes and such-like. He don’t do that as a rule, I suppose, and then again, it was just on kick-off.’

‘Did you see him enter the ground?’

‘I’d got other things to do besides watch him.’

‘Were you there when he collected his car?’

‘Yep.’

‘About when was that?’

‘Same time as all the others.’

‘He wasn’t there a little early, by any chance?’

‘Not so’s you’d notice it… he may’ve been ahead of the rush.’

‘Thank you,’ said Gently, ‘that seems to be everything.’

Outside in Railway Road he stood looking back at the ground. There lay the secret, the missing link… if only he could get his hands on it. Someone in there, or someone who had been in there on Saturday, could supply it. Someone who knew Leaming. Someone who could testify that he hadn’t been at the match… even someone who had seen him double back over Railway Bridge. But how did one separate that someone from the other twenty-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine?