Colin Watson: Bump in the Night

The policeman grunted and gazed around over heads for someone who might profitably be questioned. At that moment Harding, the keeper, appeared through the park gates accompanied by a little man carrying a tool bag. Larch disengaged himself from the water-watchers and walked rapidly to meet them, followed by Kebble.

Harding halted before Larch and stared bitterly at the crowd. “A fine to-do-ment, this little old lot,” he observed. His companion set down his bag, wiped his nose with the back of his hand and nodded agreement. Harding indicated him and explained: “From the water department. He’s come to turn it off.”

Larch ignored the introduction and the plumber, after grinning querulously at Kebble and shuffling a bit, picked up the tools and took himself off towards a small brick building on the far side of the park.

“You’re Harding, aren’t you?”

“That’s right,” replied the keeper guardedly; the chief inspector, he noticed, was looking airily over his head and he didn’t like it.

“Just what has been going on here?”

Harding glowered. “Well, you can see for yourself. The fountain’s gone. I don’t know anything else about it.”

“What were you doing during the night, Mr Harding?” Larch had the stance of an ascetic headmaster, listening abstractedly to the futile excuses of a boy caught chalking obscenities. But Harding was not to be intimidated. “Parachute jumping,” he retorted.

The corner of Larch’s mouth twitched but he continued to stare into space. “I really don’t think that sort of attitude will get us anywhere, Mr Harding,” he said gently, with his rustling lisp. “Just try and think, will you?”

“I was in bed, of course. What else should I have been doing?”

“You heard nothing?”

“I heard a damn great bang all right. A lot of other people did too, I expect.”

“Did you think it came from the park here?”

“I didn’t think anything. I went back to sleep.”

“But when you arrived here for work...”

“I found this how-d’you-do.” Harding jerked his head towards the outrage. Just then the water jet faltered, sank and disappeared. The plumber had located the stopcock.

“You had the job of maintaining the fountain, I suppose: cleaning it, and so on?”

“That’s right.”

“Bit of a nuisance, was it?”

Harding blew out his cheeks. “Here, what do you think you’re getting at?” He stared,belligerently at Larch, then looked across at Kebble, as if challenging him to translate the innuendo into plainer terms. But Kebble was busy examining a cigarette he had just lighted.

Larch said smoothly: “It’s entirely up to you, Mr Harding, to decide what you think I mean. I don’t think I have said anything to which you should take exception.”

“You as good as said I’d blown the damn thing up myself to save cleaning it.”

For the first time in the interview Larch looked directly at the park keeper. “Really, Mr Harding,” he said reprovingly. Then he turned and regarded the few ancients who still lingered around the site of the explosion. “I’d be obliged if you could find a few stakes and rope that area off. We shall want to take a closer look at it without being trampled to death by the Over-Sixty clubs.”

As they drove back into town, Kebble said: “You don’t really think he did it, do you?”

Larch smiled. “Why not? He’s a cheeky bastard.” With effortless precision he swung the big car out to the crown of the road and overtook a slow procession of vans and lorries. “Unless, of course,” he added, “you know who’s responsible.”

“Me, old chap?” Kebble affected the pained surprise that he knew Larch expected of him.

“Certainly. But I was forgetting—a journalist never gives away the source of his information, does he?”

“Never,” Kebble cheerfully confirmed. He found the strain of playing to Larch’s humour did not diminish with the years.

As the car approached the Borough Bridge he was reminded of the other matter he had intended to mention. “You knew Stan Biggadyke had piled his car up, I suppose?”

“Has he really?” Larch sounded as if he had been told that the Great Lama had hairs in his nostrils.

“Didn’t anyone tell you!”

“Maybe. What special reason have you to be interested?”

God, thought Kebble, here we go again. He said: “I’m interested in everything and everybody. A professional nosey parker. Squalid, isn’t it?”

“You’re a damned interfering old nuisance.” Larch remained silent for a while, as he always did after a vituperative remark so as to give opportunity for it to be wondered at and worried over. Then, quietly and with the calculated indifference of a man fond of fancying himself much feared, he went on: “Yes, I know about Biggadyke. He was taken slightly ill when he was driving. He hit a lorry. I believe he’s likely to be in hospital for a day or two. That’s all.”

“No charge?”

Larch gave Kebble a quick, angry glance. “Why should there be?”

“I just wondered.”

Drawing the car to the curb outside the Chronicle office, Larch leaned across his passenger and opened the door. Then he jocularly punched flat the editor’s hat and handed it to him. “Don’t forget it’s the police ball on the 14th. If you give it a respectable mention this week I might cancel the instruction I’m just about to give for you to be booted out of the station next time you try and bother me.”

From the pavement, Kebble acknowledged the sally with a patient grin as he restored the dignity of his hat and set it once more on the back of his head. Thoughtfully, he watched the big car accelerate towards the Fen Street junction.

Chapter Three

Shortly after Larch had sat down again at his desk. Councillor Pointer looked round the door. Larch beckoned him in.

Pointer sat down carefully and placed his bowler hat, brim uppermost, between his feet. He looked sour enough for this arrangement to have been a precaution.

Larch rested his jaw on his palm and regarded him lazily. “Now then, what’s bitten you?”

“I was just about blown out of bed last night. I rang down here to find what had happened.”

“Well?”

“The clot who answered couldn’t grasp what I was talking about. He tried to tell me to ring the blasted gas board.” Pointer’s tiny black moustache quivered.

“He probably hadn’t heard anything. Your place is a bit out of town.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Hector. It rocked the street. You’re not going to tell me you didn’t hear it?”

“Not from Flaxborough, I didn’t. Tuesday’s my civil defence night.”

Pointer grunted acknowledgment. “All the same, you can take my word for it; the windows nearly came in. And all that fool could do was to spell out my name letter by letter as if he was cutting it in granite. I want you to see he gets a kick up the backside.”

Larch sighed. “Look, pop: we know all about that explosion. Sergeant Worple’s over there now. It was Worple who took your report. Don’t worry, he knows his stuff.”

“Yes, but...”

“You’re just in time for some coffee.” Larch reached to a bell push at the side of the desk.

Pointer did not pursue the argument but his boot button eyes continued to pivot restlessly. He found singularly irritating his son-in-law’s reluctance to admit the inefficiency of his staff.

“Are you calling in on Hilda later on?” Larch asked him.

“Possibly.”

“Well you might tell her that Stan had an accident this morning. Nothing serious. Bent his wagon a bit.”

Pointer’s anger broke surface. “Biggadyke, you mean. Why that...”

“That’s right,” Larch interrupted smoothly. “He’s in the General, I believe...Oh, Benson”—a squat, sandy-haired constable had appeared in the doorway—“make it two coffees, will you?” He waited until the door had closed, then looked at his visitor. “Why, what’s Stan done wrong?”