Authors: Alan Hunter
‘You should be, a man like you,’ she said. ‘And my son isn’t a murderer.’
Gently stirred. ‘We’re not saying he is …’
‘No,’ she said, ‘you haven’t said it.’
Her eyes brimmed over. She felt for a handkerchief. She dabbed at her eyes for a moment. She put it away.
‘It’s like this,’ she said firmly, ‘there ain’t no harm in
Laurie, really. He’s a good boy, he always has been, he’s always kind to his old mum.’
She used the handkerchief again.
‘And he’s never been in trouble, really. Just the games they all get up to. He pinched a bike when he was a nipper. And he’s steady he is, he holds a job. There’s never been no complaint there. He’d grow out of it. He’s a good boy. There’s no harm in him. Not none.’
‘He’s been in fights, I’m told,’ Gently said.
She nodded. ‘Fights, yes. He’s been in them.’
‘He was put on a year’s probation,’ Gently said.
‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘Not a year’s probation.’
‘And a traffic offence. A speeding fine.’
She shrugged, looked at him. She twisted her mouth.
‘But he ain’t wicked,’ she said, ‘he wouldn’t kill no one. Not my son wouldn’t. Not Laurie.’
‘Would he smoke reefers?’ Gently asked.
She looked away. She said nothing.
Upstairs the jazz was going again and feet were slouching on the floor. A trumpet moaned, the saxes blared, drums thumped out a naïve rhythm. They all glanced upwards.
‘I think I’d like to talk to Maureen,’ Gently said.
‘You’re welcome, I’m sure,’ said Mrs Elton.
Her lips tightened. She rose.
Maureen came in. She was a hefty girl with a tangled mop of honey-coloured hair. She wore a black shapeless sweater which came below her hips and had a sagging turtle-neck, calf-length jeans, and ballerina sandals. She was not made up. She had dirty nails. Her hands looked
grubby and the fingers were nicotine-stained. Her expression was sulky and she didn’t look at the visitors. She sat down languidly on a pouffe, spreading her legs.
‘So you are Maureen,’ Gently said.
Maureen didn’t contradict him. She looked boredly out of the window, shaking her hair back from her eyes.
‘I’d like you to tell me about Laurie,’ Gently said. ‘About his friends and the things he did. And about Johnny Lister. And Betty Turner, about her.’
Maureen gave her hair a flick.
‘You answer him, my girl,’ said Mrs Elton.
‘Like why should I?’ said Maureen.
‘Because I tell you to,’ said Mrs Elton.
‘And give Laurie away?’ said Maureen.
‘Never you mind about that,’ said Mrs Elton. ‘Just you tell him what he wants to know. And none of that stupid talking, neither.’
‘These squares,’ Maureen said.
‘You hear what I tell you?’ said Mrs Elton.
Maureen drew up a leg, scratched her ankle a few times.
‘Like he was a jeebie,’ she said. ‘Cool. He went for it way out.’
‘Tell me about jeebies,’ Gently said.
‘You wouldn’t dig it,’ said Maureen. ‘If you’re a square you’re a square. It’s nowhere jazz to a square. But Laurie was cool, he went after it. Shooting the ton, that sort of action. But like I say you wouldn’t dig it. So what’s the use me talking?’
‘Where do they meet?’ Gently asked. ‘Do they have a club house or something?’
‘Man, you’re the most,’ said Maureen. ‘You ain’t
getting it at all. Like it isn’t a club or that jazz, it’s the way people are. Like squares and jeebies. You’re either one or the other.’
‘And Lister was a jeebie?’ Gently asked.
‘Him too,’ Maureen said.
‘And Betty Turner?’ Gently asked.
‘She’s a chick, man. A cool chick.’
‘How did
she
go after it?’ Gently asked.
‘Like she shot the ton,’ Maureen said.
‘Like she was smoking sticks?’ Gently asked.
‘Like she may have done,’ Maureen said.
‘And what about Laurie,’ Gently asked. ‘Wasn’t he smoking sticks too?’
‘He went for kicks,’ Maureen said. ‘He went way out for wild kicks.’
‘Would you pass me your handbag?’ Gently said.
‘Like help yourself,’ said Maureen, grinning.
He took the drawstring bag she had brought with her and made a quick check of the contents. He handed it back. She grinned again. She took out a cigarette and lit it.
‘Man, I’ve known brighter squares,’ she said.
‘Take that smirk off your face,’ said Mrs Elton.
‘Like my face is my own,’ Maureen said. ‘I don’t have to keep it straight for nobody.’
Gently watched her for a moment. She puffed smoke towards him. She flicked her hair once or twice. She kept her eyes away from his. He said:
‘How well did you know Lister?’
‘I saw him around,’ Maureen said. ‘I wasn’t never a chick of his. I saw him around, like that.’
‘Didn’t he used to be friends with Laurie?’
‘Till the Turner chick,’ Maureen said.
‘Who else was he friends with?’ Gently asked.
‘Lots,’ Maureen said. ‘We all liked Johnny.’
‘Name some of the others.’
‘Sure,’ Maureen said. ‘There was Sidney Bixley and Dicky Deeming. And Jack Salmon. And Frankie Knights. Like he used to be way out with Dicky, but Dicky’s the coolest. We dig him big.’
‘Tell me about Dicky,’ Gently said.
‘Like I have done,’ said Maureen. ‘He’s crazy, he’s wild, he’s way out with the birds. We meet at his pad sometimes. He’s got a pad in Eastgate Street. We’ve got a combo and make with the music – man, it’s the wildest. I go for Dicky.’
‘He’s some sort of a writer,’ said Setters. ‘A long-hair. I checked him.’
‘He’s nice,’ said Mrs Elton. ‘He ain’t one of these silly kids.’
‘What does he write?’ Gently asked.
‘Booksy jazz,’ Maureen said. ‘He fakes some action for the papers, but that’s nowhere stuff, it isn’t it. Like he writes some wild poetry, jazz that really makes the touch. And he’s writing a book too. Man, that book is the craziest.’
‘And he was a special friend of Lister’s?’ Gently asked.
‘He’s friends with all of us,’ Maureen said. ‘I’ve got big eyes for that jeebie. But he don’t never have a regular chick.’
‘You’ve seen him since the accident?’ Gently asked.
‘Sure,’ Maureen said. ‘I saw him last night.’
‘What does he think about what’s happened?’
‘A kick,’ Maureen said. ‘The mostest.’
‘A kick for Lister?’
‘Like what else?’ she said. ‘Like he was touching and heard the birds. When you shoot the ton you get to touching. It sends you, man. Like you must go.’
‘How old are you?’ Gently asked.
‘I’m seventeen,’ she said. ‘Like Laurie.’
‘And where did you pick up all this jargon?’
‘Not from me, she didn’t,’ said Mrs Elton.
Maureen flipped her hair again, gave her other ankle a scratch.
‘Squares,’ she said. ‘Always squares. It’s a nowhere drag. It hangs me up.’
‘So that’s what you get,’ Setters said as they went down to the car. ‘Her brother talked like that too until I scared the daylights out of him. You put the fifty-dollar question. Where do they get this hokum from? It isn’t film-stuff, not the most of it, nor they don’t get it on TV. It just creeps in like an epidemic. It frightens me. They don’t care.’
Gently got in, slammed his door. ‘I know where it comes from,’ he said. ‘How it got here is another matter. I’d like the answer to that too.’
‘It came with the overspills,’ Setters mused.
Gently shook his head. ‘No. There’s something like it west of Whitehall, but not in Bethnal Green and Stepney.’
‘They don’t care,’ Setters repeated. ‘That’s what’s
different about this lot. They’ve got that thing about touching something. And they’re not quite with you.’
‘What’s the Listers’ address?’ Gently asked.
‘Now there’s someone who cares,’ Setters said.
T
HEY CHARGED FOUR
thousand eight hundred and fifty for the bungalows in Chase Drive and they looked worth about half of that, which is known in some circles as modern architecture. The Lister bungalow was the last in the road, the road being a two-hundred yard cul-de-sac. There were similar bungalows on each side of the road and this one at the bottom, backing straight on the Chase. The Chase at this spot had thirty-year pines with a screen of birches in front of them. The leaves of the birches had turned pale yellow. They trembled. They caught the last of the afternoon sun. The bungalow in front of them was composed of units with flat, shed-like roofs, and was built of glass and varnished wood and painted wood and a little brick. It had a semicircular concrete driveway and the driveway had no gates. In the arc of the driveway was a goldfish pool and a rockery and a small grass plot. There was a sign staked in the grass plot, a varnished section of a tree trunk. It said Treeways. To the right of the driveway was a tradesman’s entrance with an iron gate.
‘She’s all right. Got money,’ Setters was saying as they parked. ‘Lister was one of the architects here. Coronary occlusion, about a year ago. But he left her well-off, it’s all tied up in these houses. She’s got a couple of younger kids. Good-looking. Probably marry again.’
‘Living alone?’ Gently asked.
‘Till last week,’ Setters replied. ‘She’s got her mother here now to tide her over for a bit.’
They left the car on the road and walked up the driveway. The main door was plain wood painted white and had an iron bell-pull. It rang some chimes. An elderly woman came. She looked sharply at Gently. Setters addressed her as Mrs Clarkson and did his introduction again.
‘Jennifer’s dressing,’ said Mrs Clarkson. ‘You’d better come in, and I’ll tell her. But I hope you’re not going to be here for long. I’m fetching the children from school shortly.’
‘Not for long,’ Gently said. ‘We could come back tomorrow.’
‘It isn’t that, but she really isn’t fit to talk to people,’ said Mrs Clarkson.
She ushered them in through a square hall with a polished parquet floor and into a three-sided,
slant-ceilinged
room of which the fourth side was a glassed-in veranda. She left them. Setters sat down. Gently moved about the room. The slant-ceiling gave it spaciousness. The furniture was unpolished in a grey-toned wood. The upholstery of the furniture was in off-white and lemon and the carpet was off-white with flecks of black.
The walls were papered in a trellis design. There was a piano. There was a record player.
‘What makes a kid from a home like this run riot?’ Setters inquired. ‘I wish I’d been a kid here. I wish I owned a place like it.’
‘When did Lister leave school?’ Gently asked.
‘That’s a point,’ Setters said. ‘It’d be a year ago, wouldn’t it, about the time his old man went. Since when he’s been working as a plumber’s mate for the firm his father was connected with. Starting at the bottom, more than likely. Not a question of money here.’
‘Did Elton work for that firm?’ Gently asked.
‘Yes,’ Setters said. ‘Hailey and Lincon’s. They’re a local firm here in Latchford. They brought in Lister for the overspill project.’
The door from the hall opened. Mrs Lister came in. She was a woman above middle height with a slender waist and wide hips. She had straight-cut gold-brown hair and green eyes and wide cheekbones and under the eyes were blued patches, and the cheeks were pale and a little sagged. She wore a charcoal dress with a bushed skirt. It had a belt. She wore a thin gold chain. She came forward.
‘You wanted to see me again?’ she asked. She held her hand out to Gently.
‘Just a recapitulation,’ Gently said. ‘I’m fresh here, and it always helps.’
‘I want to help you,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘I keep thinking I haven’t helped enough. If Les had been here …’ She stopped. ‘I want to help you all I can,’ she said.
She sat down on a wing armchair, crossing her calves
and swinging them slantwise. She laid her hands in her lap. She made a small, hesitant smile for them.
‘I keep hoping it was an accident after all,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to know any more than that. It’s bad enough that Johnny is dead. I don’t think I could bear it if it’s something else.’
Gently nodded. ‘Life can be unkind.’
‘Yes.’ She smiled again. ‘Yes.’
‘And the worst of it is we have to find him,’ he said.
‘I understand that,’ she said. ‘I’m simply selfish.’
‘How did it start?’ he asked. ‘All this business. The motorcycling, the slang.’
‘I honestly don’t know,’ Mrs Lister said. ‘And yet I do. It happened after Les went.’
‘You think that was the cause of it?’ Gently asked.
‘I feel it had something to do with it,’ she said, ‘You see, up till that time Johnny was enthusiastic about his career. But Les going upset him terribly. I think there must have been a connection.’
‘What was his career to have been?’ Gently asked.
‘Building and contracting,’ she said. ‘Les wanted him to be an architect, but Johnny didn’t have the same talent for it. It was the practical side that Johnny was good at. Not just using his hands, but organization. So Les said all right, he’d better not waste time at college, and Johnny went straight into Hailey and Lincon’s. Which is what he wanted to do.’
‘Was he happy there?’ Gently asked.
‘I thought he was,’ Mrs Lister said. ‘He used to be talking about it always. And he went to evening classes in Castlebridge.’
‘Is that how he came to have a motorcycle?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That was mostly the reason. He had a scooter on his sixteenth birthday, but Castlebridge is twenty-five miles from here.’
‘And then what happened?’ Gently asked.
‘Well, he seemed to lose interest,’ Mrs Lister said. ‘He dropped the classes. He dropped a lot of his old friends. He became moody and secretive, bored when he was at home. I thought perhaps there was a girl in it. I tried to get him to confide in me. Then there was this awful slang and the passion for jazz records, and the silly clothes he used to wear. I kept hoping it was simply a phase. He wouldn’t talk to me about it.’
‘He made other friends, didn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘though not the sort I approved of. He brought them home once or twice, but he soon stopped doing that. I’m to blame I suppose. I ought to have concealed what I thought of them. But I couldn’t help it. They were terrible. I don’t think some of them ever washed. And there they sat, in his room, playing jazz records and smoking. Till the small hours, sometimes. I had to say something.’
‘Do you remember who they were?’ Gently asked.
‘I’m not sure I knew their names,’ she said. ‘But I remember the Elton boy coming. And Elton’s sister. And Dicky Deeming.’
‘Jack Salmon. Frankie Knights.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t remember. Only Dicky. I thought that Dicky was old enough to have known
better. But he’s a writer, of course, so he might have been slumming after material.’ She made a face. ‘If you can call this bungalow a slum,’ she added.
‘How old is Deeming then?’
‘Oh, thirty-ish,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘He looks younger because he’s boyish, short hair and that. He writes for the little reviews, I’m told, and does book notices and things. He’s our only local author. That’s why I remember him.’
‘And Johnny was specially friendly with him?’
‘Oh, quite infatuated,’ she said. ‘For a time, you know. A spell of teenage hero-worship. Dicky was what Johnny wanted to be. Cool, I think is the term they use. A rebel against all convention, a jazz expert and etcetera. For a time he was always around with Dicky. Then Dicky faded out again.’
‘Was there any reason for that?’ Gently asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘It was around that time, or soon after, that he fell so heavily for Betty Turner. Poor girl. She little knew how it would end, her romance with Johnny. But I think she may have displaced Dicky. I remember thinking so at the time.’
‘He was genuinely in love with her, was he?’
Mrs Lister nodded several times. ‘He was like his father. Fell with a bang. Very like his father, was Johnny.’
‘Did you approve of Betty Turner?’
‘I didn’t disapprove,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t have picked her, she’s a sad little trollop. But I thought she was a healthier influence than Dicky. If she’d loved Johnny too.’
‘She didn’t love him?’ Gently said.
‘No,’ said Mrs Lister, ‘she didn’t. It was just a crush on her side.’
Setters shifted in his chair. ‘They were engaged, weren’t they?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They were engaged. But it wasn’t serious with Betty. If you want my frank opinion they wouldn’t have lasted for much longer. She was very pettish just lately. Johnny was much concerned, poor child.’
‘Was Elton the trouble?’ Gently asked.
‘He may have been,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘I know she used to be fond of Elton and sometimes she teased Johnny about him. I’m not sure. She was pettish and listless. She’d just grown tired of Johnny, I think.’
Gently sat silent for some moments. Mrs Lister was biting her lip. The wing of the armchair shaded her face, her eyes were hooded but staring fixedly. Now the sun had gone in. The light in the room was greyer.
‘I’ve seen your statement,’ Gently said, ‘about what happened last Tuesday. But I’d like you to go through it again, just in case there’s anything you forgot.’
She shuddered. ‘I’ve told you everything,’ she said.
‘I’d be grateful,’ he said, ‘if you’d face it.’
She nodded weakly. ‘I know I must. You’re very kind. I’ll try.’
‘First,’ he said, ‘did it differ in any way from your usual Tuesday programme?’
She thought a little. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I can’t remember anything different.’
‘You got your youngsters up, did you, got the breakfast and so forth?’
‘Mrs Jillings got the breakfast,’ she said. ‘Mrs Jillings is my daily.’
‘Then did you all have breakfast together?’
She shook her head. ‘Johnny had his first. He had to be at the site at eight. He was working on the Ford Road project.’
‘Did Johnny seem much as usual?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘What I saw of him. Except perhaps he was a little short with me. But I’d been used to that, lately. He rang Betty.’
‘What about?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t listen,’ she said. ‘I thought he was arranging about the evening, you know, the jazz thing in Castlebridge. He used to go there every Tuesday.’
‘Did he usually ring her about it?’
‘I don’t remember,’ she said. ‘He used to ring Betty a lot.’
‘So then you saw him off, did you?’
‘I saw him get his bike out,’ she said. ‘I was dressing Jean in the kiddies’ bedroom. I gave him a wave but he didn’t see me. Then, well, it was much as always. I drove the kiddies to school. Mrs Jillings did the ironing while I prepared the things for lunch. Then I drove down to town, did some shopping, went to Leonard’s for coffee. It can’t be of importance. Only to me, that is.’
‘Johnny came home to lunch, did he?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘at about twenty to one.’
‘Was that his usual time for lunch?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘They leave off at twelve-thirty.’
‘Was there anything you noticed at lunch?’
‘He was quiet,’ she said. ‘He had nothing to say. And usually he read the lunchtime paper. I thought he was brooding about Betty. I tried to talk to him about it. I could have helped him, I know. I’d give anything now.’ She stopped. ‘He snapped at me,’ she said.
‘What made you think he was brooding over Betty?’
She paused. ‘Woman’s intuition,’ she said. ‘But no, that’s not quite true, really. I’d seen him worrying over her before. I watched him the more because he’d gone so far from me. I sometimes knew what he was thinking. Poor Johnny. Poor Johnny. But all the time I was with him really.’
‘So you’d begun to lose him,’ Gently said, ‘when you lost your husband.’
She nodded silently. Her hand lifted and fell again in her lap.
‘It’s been all one tragedy.’
‘All one,’ she said.
‘These kids,’ Setters said. He wrung his hands, making the joints crack.
‘Was there anything else about lunch?’ Gently asked.
She was on the point of shaking her head. She changed her mind. ‘One thing,’ she said, ‘since you want to know every detail. He went to his room when he came in. Before he washed or did anything. I thought perhaps he’d gone to fetch something, but he was carrying nothing when he came out.’
‘Did he take something in there?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘he’d nothing with him. Or it was something very small which he carried in his pocket.’
‘Have you noticed anything in his room?’
‘No, nothing,’ she said.
‘You’ve been in there since Tuesday?’
‘Once,’ she said, ‘I went in.’
‘Let’s go on from after lunch.’
She leant her head on the wing of the chair. ‘It was one of those blank afternoons,’ she said. ‘Nothing happened much at all. After the washing-up I did some mending, Peter’s socks, Jean’s gym-slip. Then I looked at the TV, but there was nothing on that. So I pottered about in the house till it was time to fetch the kiddies. They’d had their tea and were out playing by the time Johnny got back. He was angrier if anything.’
‘Had he been angry before?’
‘With me,’ she said. ‘He’d been angry all day. And now he was angrier. We couldn’t exchange a civil word. I was bushed, I felt desperate, I couldn’t think what I was going to do about him. I’ve been miserable. It needed a man. Johnny needed a man to cope with him.’
‘Can you remember anything significant he said?’
‘It was just angriness,’ she said. ‘Picking on things, you know, making a tragedy out of nothing. The tea wasn’t ready when he wanted it, he couldn’t find a clean shirt, Mrs Jillings hadn’t pressed his tie, I got in his way in the bathroom. By the time it was over and he’d gone I was practically in tears. I put the kiddies to bed early. Jean came in for a smacking.’
‘And you put it down to his anxiety about Betty.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I suppose I did. Betty and everything she stood for.’