When Superintendent Vesty sent down, he was in the lavatory and there was a further delay while they shouted around for him. In his rush his braces slipped and caught him a vicious blow in the eye. He reached the office with tears streaming down his cheek.
'Took your time didn't you, Davies?' said Vesty. Propped before him was a folder with 'Police Boxing' printed on the cover.
'Sorry, sir. I was out for a minute.'
'What's wrong with your eye?'
Davies grappled for a handkerchief, failed, and wiped the water away with the back of his hand. 'Bit of a cold, sir.'
Vesty, a wide-eared, round-shouldered man, took no further interest. He bowed low over the folder. 'D'you know Wilfred Gamage?' he inquired almost absently. 'Black kid. Fancies he can box.'
'Yes, I know him
’
answered Davies. 'Wilful Damage, they call him.'
'It's the Police Boxing Night,' said Vesty, tapping the folder. 'He wants to fight a policeman.'
Davies felt himself go pale. 'I'm a bit old for that, sir.' His voice came out in a croak.
Vesty looked aghast. 'Christ, not
you,
Davies. You get dented enough when you're on duty.' He appeared to recall the purpose of the interview and picked up a typed letter with several attachments. He sighed and said: 'Now, what the hell have you been up to?'
'It's the Essex thing, is it, sir?'
The superintendent's round shoulders seemed to get rounder. 'What else? Have you been up to anything else?'
'Oh no, sir. It was all a bit unfortunate.'
'Listen, Davies,' said Vesty ponderously. 'You know bloody well that nobody -
nobody -
can just traipse across another police force's manor without express permission. You know how touchy they get. We wouldn't like it ourselves. If some copper from Chelmsford suddenly took it into his head to roam around this division, there'd be hell to pay.'
'Yes sir.'
'And what, in God's name, was it all about?' He tapped the paper in his hand. 'What's all this stuff about Brock?'
'Lofty Brock,' replied Davies defensively. 'Remember, he died in the canal here, last October. But I don't think it was just an accident
...'
Vesty banged the letter on the desk. 'Oh, come on now, Davies! You know as well as I do that you can't just take things on yourself. The Brock case - according to our records which I have here - was open and shut. There was an inquest.'
'Yes, sir. Open verdict.'
'I don't give a damn what the verdict was! All I know is that you've been pissing about where you shouldn't be. Haven't we got enough to occupy you here? We had half a dozen parking meters prised open this weekend - with an axe by the look of it. Is that stuff too small for you?'
'No sir. I was doing the Brock thing in my own time.'
Again Vesty slammed his fist on the table so fiercely he winced. 'Your own time! Jesus - that's worse!' He stood and leaned over like a toppling tree. His thick fingers wagged. 'You must be potty! Drop it - drop it now, Davies! At bloody once.'
Davies eyed him nervously. 'Yes sir
...
I have. Right now. More or less.'
'More or less nothing!' exploded the superintendent. 'You are in trouble - right in the shit, believe me. This has to go further. It's out of my hands.' He looked bitterly at Davies. 'Anything else? Anything further you want taken into consideration?'
'No sir, nothing,' said Davies. 'Nothing at all.
Vesty's sigh as he sat down was so loud it emerged like gas from a balloon. 'If this sort of thing went on all the time, the Metropolitan Police as we know it would be rent apart,' he said sonorously. 'Let's hope we can get you off lightly.'
'I hope so, sir,' said Davies. He rose from the chair. Vesty was glaring at the letter again.
'You must be potty,' he repeated. 'Isn't there enough crime without inventing it?'
When Davies went down to the evening meal at 'Bali Hi', Furtman Gardens, that day, he was discomfited to find his estranged wife Doris sitting primly alone at the table. Mod, he knew, had been summoned to a meeting with a senior employment officer and had gone with anxious heart; it was Minnie Banks's night for her grooming and personality class, Mr Smeeton had an early performance and Mrs Fulljames was immersed in culinary steam.
"Evening,' said Davies politely as he took his chair at the opposite end of the table. The off-white cloth was like a gulf between them. 'Not a bad day for the time of year.'
'You've ruined my life
’
said Doris, looking down at her knife, fork and spoon. 'Ruined it.'
'Not now,' pleaded Davies. 'I've had a terrible day at the police station.'
'Every day is terrible for me,' she sniffed. She picked up the knife and laid it down again. 'You've ruined my life.'
'So you said. But why bring it up now? It's been years, after all.'
'Years
’
she agreed. 'In this house. Separated. We can't go on living together like this.'
'Well,' said Davies, pondering the logic. 'It's been all right so far. It suits us both. We don't get under each other's feet all that much.'
'Don't you remember
’
she said, her voice all at once hushed, 'when we were tango champions of Finchley Lacarno. Doesn't it mean anything to you? You were different then. It was when you got out of uniform - and started drinking.'
'It's difficult to go drinking wearing a helmet
’
he acknowledged. 'Somebody always notices.'
'Make jokes,' she retorted. 'Go on.' She began to sob.
'Oh, don't cry, Doris
’
said Davies genuinely. 'Not here
’
'Where can I cry then?' she snivelled. 'In my room?' 'I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.' 'No, you're not. You've still got that darkie.' 'That is professional. And it's my business,' he said firmly.
'It's
mine.
You're my husband.'
The reality came to him with a sort of shock. He almost said: 'So I am
’
Instead he asked her: 'Would you be happier if we had a divorce?' Her expression sagged. The tears which had been suspended from her lower eyelashes splashed to the table-cloth.
'Divorce?' she said. 'Divorce? We can't have a divorce. Never. I couldn't face the disgrace.'
She blew her nose, terrifically, into her paper table napkin. Minnie Banks came in from the grooming and personality class as wan and knock-kneed as ever. She wished them a timid good evening and left again to wash her hands. Mrs Fulljames emerged from the kitchen with two plates of brown Windsor soup, carried at arms' length like smoking bombs. 'Been having a little chat, have you,' she said, placing one before Doris and one in front of Davies. 'It's nice when you can get together for a little chat, I think. It clears the air.'
Doris blew her nose violently again, sending tidal ripples over
the surface of the brown Windsor.
'It's called clinging to the wreckage,' said Davies.
'Both of you,' said Jemma. They were in The Babe In Arms awaiting Mod.
'I suppose so. It's ridiculous, I know, but we've been going along like this for years. In the same house. She's been there and I've been there and we've hardly exchanged a civil word. But it didn't seem to be so difficult or embarrassing.' He looked at her deep eyes regarding him soberly. 'But it's you. That's the difference.'
Jemma put her fingers on the hand folded around his beer. 'Dangerous,' she said with great seriousness. 'There's no way we could ever get together; I mean
marry.'
She appeared unusually embarrassed. 'Even if you asked. I could never take you to Martinique.'
'No, I don't suppose you could,' mumbled Davies as if the matter had preoccupied him over a long period. 'Not Martinique.'
Mod appeared, a wide cheery smile topping his overcoat collar. 'You won, did you?' said Davies, rising to get a round of drinks. The bar was only a yard distant. 'There's no danger then of you personally diminishing the unemployment figures.'
'None af all
’
said Mod with satisfaction. 'And as from now I am not merely unemployed, I am unemployable.' From beneath his overcoat he produced a bunch of stapled papers. 'My file,' he said with some pride. 'I went back after the interview to tell the senior official something in mitigation of my circumstances. I was almost in the street when I remembered it. So I returned to the interview room and it was empty. The chap and his clerk had gone. And my file was on the table.'
'What you are about to confess is criminal,' said Davies, bringing the drinks to the table.
'It's
my
file
’
pointed out Mod.
'I don't want to hear another word about it,' Davies warned, sitting down. 'And I didn't hear the words you just said.'
Mod sat quietly: 'I had to wait for about half an hour in another office.'
'What did you nick from there, the Queen's national insurance card?'
'No, this
’
said Mod, burrowing in his pocket. 'They had telephone directories for every part of the country. So I amused myself looking for Prenderleys in the Essex directory. Like the policeman in Chelmsford told you, there's only a single group of them, all living in Southend. Apart from Old Tommy at Purwell.' He found the piece of paper. 'There,' he said, handing it to Davies. 'There's four of them on the phone.'
Davies took the list. 'I've been warned off,' he muttered. 'I had a nasty few minutes with the super today and he's not all that pleased with me. Trespassing on another manor. It's got to be referred higher. I may get the heave-ho.' He smiled at Jemma. 'I may leave the country. Go to live in Martinique or somewhere.'
Jemma said: 'We've got a choral society outing to Southend next week.'
They sang all the way from Kensal Rise, the coach itself seeming to roll and roar in harmony. Davies, who knew none of the words and few of the tunes, sat next to Jemma against the window, mouthing haplessly and with increasingly weary lips. Jemma had told only Mr Swingler, the conductor of the choir, of Davies's real mission, and then in considerably altered details. As far as the other members of the society were concerned, he was a visiting tenor from Wales who sang only in Welsh. Davies made mouth movements and emitted occasional pseudo-Welsh sounds while looking resolutely out of the window at the passing suburbs and eventually the brief grey-green rural approach to Southend-on-Sea.
It was a poor day for visiting the seaside. Windy drizzle blew against the coach windows. People crouched along pavements, hoping for something better. It mattered little to Davies, nor did the oddness of his situation, the impossibility of matching the singing nor the increasing tiredness of lips and gums. None of it mattered because Mavis Prenderley, late nanny of Cape House, Frinton, and inmate of Chelmsford Women's Prison, was alive and well and he was going to see her.
The coach reached the domed hall where the choir festival was taking place.
Canvas banners strung across
the outside strained like sails in the wind coming from the muddy sea. The members of the choral society came off the coach like disembarking footballers, flexing their limbs, making sharp forays along the promenade while gulping in lungfuls of brined air; sounding off scales and snatches of cantata.
'Wait until they're all inside the hall,' whispered Jemma, 'and then make a dash for it. Get back by six or you'll be left behind.'
They followed the other choristers into the building. The main lighting had not been switched on and the singers moved about like shadows, complaining about flying dust and testing the accoustics by singing out from the stage to colleagues placed in strategic parts of the auditorium. Everyone appeared to be occupied. Jemma rolled her eyes to Davies to make for the door.
At an elated crouch he went from the hall into the grey afternoon. Byron Street where Mavis Prenderley lived was only ten minutes' walk; he would not even have to get a taxi. In the slack season seaside taxi drivers were inclined to be nosey and observant.
He had his collar pulled up, for both shelter and concealment, but he strode purposefully like a man with nothing to hide. A policeman came around a corner, one of those apparently aimless wandering constables who appear for no reasonable reason at inconvenient moments. Davies stopped himself crossing to the other side of the street and, burying his face deeper into the cleft of his collar, he slightly less blatantly strode on. The policeman paused and, to Davies's relief, studied the contents of a second-hand shop window.
Byron Street was terraced houses, small and old but with optimistically painted doors, clean curtains and plant pots in the windows. At number forty-three he paused, lowered his collar, and knocked. She answered so immediately that he thought she might have been waiting inside the door. He must have studied, stared at her, because she gave an elderly blush. 'Mr Thompson?' she said. 'Come in. Don't stand in the street.'
Already committed to the lie, Davies mumbled his thanks and ducked below the threshold. The door gave straight into the room, a crowded, tight, old-fashioned parlour, with covers on the backs and the arms of the two red chairs, a big ticking clock in between two petrified dogs on the mantelshelf, droplets of glass hanging around the light bulb and damask curtains suspended within the modest nets at the window. There was a decorative square of carpet, balding in places, and a heavy dark table and four chairs. Over the fireplace, above a gas fire which, judging by its sputtering, had just been lit, was a picture of a wild mountain scene and beside it a framed photograph of a small and grinning young man. He tried not to stare too closely at it. Was it? Was it Lofty Brock? He swallowed so hard the old lady heard him.