Alan Hunter: Gently Does It

He himself passed over quite close to the little glass box, staring hard at its inmate as he went by. But the bridge-keeper was apparently bored by football crowds. He sat with his back to them, reading the midday paper.

On the other side of the bridge the crush was again augmented by the disemboguing of Riverside. Gently was hustled down like a cork. He barely had time to glance across at the car park with its tangle of moving and stationary vehicles when he was swept past and left high and dry on the end of a turnstile queue. How could one man be singled out in all that turmoil…? One had enough to do looking after oneself. If this had been last Saturday, would he, Gently, have noticed which way Leaming had gone when he left the car park… or even if Leaming was there at all?

The queue behind thrust him through the absurdly narrow little turnstile like a pip coming out of an orange, his one-and-nine snatched from his hand. He found himself amongst the loose, running crowd at the back of the terraces. Already the terraces seemed full, thronged with a dark, mass of humanity, a strange livid weal. But they were not full yet, because the armies still marched over Railway Bridge, still hurried down Queen Street, Riverside, and at the far end, down Railway Road. Thirty thousand people, perhaps more. Gently made his way round to the far side, the popular side, and forgetting he was no longer a uniform man, shouldered his way pretty well to the front.

Opposite him stretched the grandstand, all the length of the pitch, in front the packed enclosure, behind the close-banked tiers of seats, rising into the interior gloom, fully fledged with their human freight. On his right reared the Barclay stand, not seated, airier and less boxed-in than the other. Ice-cream boys marched along the naming-track. They caught sixpences with unerring hands and hurled their wares far up into the murmuring crowd. In the centre of the pitch tossed a bunch of balloons in the opposing colours… the City’s flag hung palely after nearly a season’s rains.

Gently leaned on the corner of a crush-rail and took it in, section by section. It was here, if he could find it, there was something here that would give Leaming’s alibi the lie… something. But what was it, that something? How could he abstract it from a pattern so large and overwhelming? The loud-speaker music broke out in a strident, remorseless march, overriding his thought and concentration, compelling him to accept it, to accept the occasion, to accept the mood of the crowd… he shook his head and went on searching. It was here, he repeated to himself, almost like a spell.

The match went well for the City. Not always immaculate before their own crowd, they took command of the game from the kick-off and rarely let it out of their grasp till the final whistle. Yet there was very little excitement. The score, two-one, indicated a hard-fought battle, whereas if the City had taken all their chances they might have gone near double figures. The crowd was correspondingly apathetic, seeing their team so near a resounding victory and still unable to force it home.

‘We ought to have had Cullis here today… he’d’ve shown them where the goal was. Alfie wants to have everything laid on for him.’

‘Lord knows how Noel missed that last one.’

‘I reckon Ken is standing in the goal there, laughing at them.’

A particularly glaring miss was acknowledged by a slow hand-clap from one section of the crowd. When the final whistle went there was very little ovation for either side. Immediately the spectators turned and began their shuffle towards the exits, dissatisfied, feeling it might have been much better than it was.

‘Well,’ said one pundit to his mate, ‘at least it was a clean game

… they weren’t like that lot we had here last week. I reckon Robson is still feeling the effects of that foul.’

‘Anyway, it got us a goal.’

Gently pushed his way past them grimly, intent now only on getting out. He hadn’t found it. He was going away empty-handed. And he had been so sure, so completely positive…! His whole instinct, buoyed on the pattern of the case, had told him that the trail would end that afternoon at Railway Road.

He felt, as Hansom had phrased it, like a kid who’d got his sums wrong. And it was a bitter pill for Gently to swallow. ‘Yesterday, the thing had begun to move, it was on its way. It had only needed one more stroke… this one, and every nerve in his body had told him that he would find it that afternoon at Railway Road. But he’d been wrong, and he hadn’t found it… the instinct that had carried him through so many cases had failed him.

Despairingly he thrust his way through the tight-packed crowd, looking at no one, caring for no one. He couldn’t quite believe it had happened to him. Always before the luck that smiles on good detectives had smiled on him at the crucial moment… he felt suddenly that he must be getting old and past it. He was falling down on a case.

At the city end of Queen Street was a small, cheap cafe, nearly on the corner of Prince’s Street. Gently went in, bought himself a cup of tea and some rolls, then sat down with them at a marble-topped table. He’d got to get himself straightened out, to get his thoughts in order. At the moment they were tumbling over each other in a wild commotion, refusing to come together in a coherent picture: while through them all wound the insidious echo — it was there, if you could have found it.

He bit the end off a roll that wasn’t fresh and washed it down with some over-brewed tea. His mind was balking, it wouldn’t settle down. Stupidly he began to fight his way back into the afternoon, beginning with his walk down Queen Street and adding to it, piece by piece, the people who went in front, the people who went behind, the cars that hooted, the programme-sellers using a sand-hopper for a stall. There was the bridge and the bridge-keeper, who wouldn’t have noticed his own brother going by, and the bedlam of the car park with its entrance almost flush opposite the artery of Riverside.

Slowly the picture came into focus, the turnstile, the crowd running loose round the backs, the shove down into the terraces, the music of the loud-speakers. And the game with its end-of-the-season looseness, and the comments of the crowd round about. It came back now, sharp and incisive, even tiny details like the worn paint and patches of rust on the crush-rail. Gently munched on down the roll, the distant look came back into his eye. What had they said about the goalkeeper? Ken was standing in the goal and laughing at them. Well, he looked as though he might have been, up there, watching his team-mates make one glaring miss after another — ‘Lord knows how Noel missed that last one.’ But the championship was virtually settled: it was time to laugh at one’s mistakes. ‘At least it was a clean game… not like the lot last week.’ That was true, there had been very few fouls. ‘I reckon Robson is still feeling the effects of that foul.’ ‘Anyway, it got us a goal.’

Gently paused, the tail-end of the roll halfway between his plate and his mouth. The words echoed back through his mind: Robson… foul… goal. What was it there that struck a chord, that reached out towards some mental pigeon-hole with a faint, but definite persistence? He took a deep breath and put down the end of the roll. ‘Have you got a phone I can use?’ he asked the woman who was serving.

‘You can use the one in the hall,’ she replied, reluctantly.

Gently dialled and waited impatiently. ‘Chief Inspector Gently… Is the super there?’ They put him through to the super’s office, but it was Hansom who answered the phone. Gently said: ‘Look, Hansom, are the reports of those interrogations where you can lay hands on them?’ Hansom snorted down the phone. ‘Haven’t you turned that job in yet…?’ Gently said: ‘This is important. I want you to read me over the first few questions and answers of the report on Leaming.’