Say Goodbye to the Boys (15 page)

And then there was a hand on my shoulder. ‘Are you Philip Roberts?' A tall, plump man, red hair in a crew cut. He looked like police to me. Heavy freckles on his face, wearing a grubby raincoat with damp patches on it, mud on his boots.

‘Philip Roberts,' I agreed. There was a suggestion of freckles in his eyes. Here we go, back to the police station, I thought. Well, that was something positive, at least – and I might catch up with Emlyn and his old man there.

‘Davies, CID,' he said. ‘Look – you know David Garston, don't you? We're looking for him.'

‘What's up – is he lost?'

‘Don't be funny, mister. He's done a bunk. This bloody fog. You seen anything of him?'

‘I thought you had him in.' The man sat down next to me and looked as if he was ready for a rest. ‘Has he made a run for it?'

‘I never said that...'

‘Well – have you tried his home?' Christ, I thought, Davy Garston. And felt relieved.

‘How d'you think I got all this shit on me?' He said, looking down at his boots.

‘Davy Garston – you want him?'

‘I don't want him. I want to get off bloody duty, mate, and get my head down.' He sighed heavily. ‘You've not seen him then?'

‘Not a sign,' I said. ‘If I do – shall I tell him you're looking for him?'

‘Very funny,' he said. ‘You got funny mates as well. That old man, that Emlyn Morton – they was out there, digging in all that cowshit.'

The news floored me. ‘At Garston's farm?' He nodded. By God, I thought, and felt the blood pound in my head. Abandoned. Left out. Well of all the miserable bloody tricks to play. He'd picked Emlyn. ‘What were they digging for?' I said.

He got to his feet and stretched and yawned. ‘Search me. For worms? Maybe they're going fishing.'

‘What about Mr Morton? Is he in the police station still?'

‘Look, matey, I can't talk about who's in the station and who isn't. You've not seen this young Garston right? If you do – say nothin'. Just come and tell us, OK?' My turn to nod. He went out and I felt more alone than ever.

I left the cafe and started to wander. Lights on in the houses, only a few people out and about, blinds down on many windows. Maelgwyn a secret place, like a town occupied by the enemy. Lights in every window on St John's Street, except one house. Ceri's. The bell under my finger rang hollow and echoing. From an upstairs window in the next house a woman I couldn't see called out, ‘Not at home. They had to go in the middle of the night. Mrs Price's sister Olwen took seriously ill in the port.' I thanked her and walked back up the street, cursing the fog, sulking again, a child left out of the game. I wasn't going to see what they were playing at out there on Garston's farm. To hell with it. And once more that bloody poem in my head.

 

‘Goodness,' Miss Phelps said. ‘Philip Roberts. One has to be careful who one opens one's doors to.' Another inch of door space, another part-face. ‘Philip Roberts? Are you the one who received a decoration for gallantry?'

 

‘That's Emlyn Morton.' And the door was opened wide. I nearly laughed aloud, having forgotten what a little round dumpling of a woman she was. Miss Dorothy Phelps, English Lit.

‘You were in the fifth when I retired. You joined the Navy?'

‘The army.' She led me into her sitting room which had a second fog from cigarette smoke.

‘And it was North Africa?'

‘Burma.' She had five wireless sets, a notebook by each one.

‘Father a butcher?'

‘Bookseller.'

She did a little dance and clapped her hands. ‘Ah. Yes. Got it! Emlyn Morton's crowd.' Her voice which had boomed Shakespeare, Tennyson and Keats was ragged. ‘I have been trying to forget you all. A poem you say?' She accepted a cigarette eagerly. ‘Your interest in poetry then was minimal, surely? Sit. Cup of tea?' By Laura's standards the room was dirty. Miss Phelps moved a vacuum cleaner and went through into the kitchen to put the kettle on the stove. ‘Forty years I spoke,' she went on, ‘now I listen to my wireless. Philip Roberts, Philip Roberts – so many Robertses and Joneses and Williamses. Radio Paris in ten minutes! And you want the school magazines? Astonishing.'

She went on hunting in sideboards and cupboards, treated me to a bottoms up view of a pair of blue bloomers and brown stockings, and refused all offers of help, muttering my name as she did so. She came back with a large, cardboard box, paused to light yet another cigarette before she opened it. ‘Did you say 1937?' Yellowing, typewritten sheets in her hands, but there was no poem by Edward Mortimer in that issue.

‘Will you try 1938?'

She held up a stubby finger for silence, the cigarette smoke bringing tears. ‘Edward Mortimer. Philip, we never had an Edward Mortimer. I would have remembered that one. But we – ah, yes – we had a little joke. She smoothed down a page. ‘Yes, yes. We had a joke.' She cleared her throat and croaked it out:

 

Who's left to love?

Only he who rages –

Gone to ashes all the ages.

Summer has a fine warm face,

Winter such a cold embrace.'

 

And we were silent. The time for Radio Paris was long
since past. She gave me a long, questioning look. ‘By Edward Mortimer. Did you know that not one member of staff, none of the children, not one parent ever asked me who Edward Mortimer was! And what does that prove? Why – that nobody ever reads school magazines.'

‘Emlyn?' I said.

She nodded. ‘He and Marshall Edmunds came to see me – here, in this house. Mrs Edmunds, I was told – is it true?'

‘Yes.'

Another cigarette appeared in her mouth.

‘Incredible. It is many years since I saw her. I don't get out much, you see. Never a mixer.' She traced the words with a nicotine stained finger. ‘Children come up with a promising idea, you know – in poetry I mean. They look as if they are going to take you somewhere – then they quit. This is what has happened here. The first three lines promise something, however obscure, and then we go onto something else entirely. It has little meaning out of context. Such a private poem, wouldn't you say? I said to him “you never wrote this, Morton” but he was a beautiful boy, you know, a charmer. Claimed Edward Mortimer was his nom de plume. I never knew if he had penned it or not. But in it went. A bit of a joke.' Ash from her cigarette fell on the paper and she blew it away. ‘A private poem. It can mean anything you want it to. Like a prayer.'

She shivered visibly. She stared, a plump and solemn owl, questions gathering behind the cigarette smoke. ‘Why do you want to know? As a young man you did not exhibit either a great concern or feeling for poetry – although I may of course have misjudged you – now home from the war...'

‘I don't know. It was just something that was going through my head. Look – thank you very much, Miss Phelps. I'll be going. Sorry to put you to any trouble.'

I got to my feet and she followed me down the hallway to the door, but at a distance. I opened the door, and then she spoke, ‘His mother had died that winter. I saw it as an obscure elegy for her. Gossip said his father was having an affair at the time. Such a private poem.'

How tiny she was in the gloom of the hall, running a hand through her short grey hair. I apologised again and stepped out into the fog. She came in a rush to push the door to. ‘It's very important, isn't it?' She called after me, a kind of relief in her voice.

‘No, not really,' I replied, but it was important. I felt as if I was nearly there. I walked home slowly, and each face in the fog was Idwal Morton's.

 

Laura was in the kitchen, pouring herself a glass of stout. ‘What have we here,' I said. ‘I thought you'd signed the pledge.'

She kept her face hidden. ‘No jokes required,' she said and gulped down half a glassful. ‘The wedding will not now take place! He's changed his mind.'

‘Well – good God – what came over him? I'll go and sort him out for you.'

She became suddenly vicious. ‘Don't you think you've done enough? All of you? All these terrible things that have happened?' Laura in tears. ‘Like he said – as a man in business in the town he can't afford to have his name mixed up...'

‘Can't afford what? Does he think I've been murdering people?'

‘You've been involved – and people talk...'

‘The miserable old sod!' How many wrong things can you say? ‘If you ask me – you're well rid of the bloody old skinflint!'

Then she looked up, her face stiff as a mask, her voice filmed with ice. ‘Did it never strike you that I liked him?' I had to look away, and the silence grew around us. I wanted to say I was sorry, but it was too late for that. J. Palmer Roberts' son – your father always laughed at me.

I was still wearing my raincoat. ‘I have to go out, Laura,' I said. ‘I'm sorry.' But she made no reply.

 

XV

 

 

 

 

The fog had taken over space and time. No distance and limited sphere of vision, no longer a meaning to day or night. I stamped angrily through it, sometimes misjudging the corner of a building, bumping against a lamp post, colliding with a pillar box that should not have been there. Heading for nowhere and with no purpose. The ships cried out to one another in the estuary, a new urgency in their sound, a new poignancy too. And the fog was colder now and in its mass a smell of burning. It had to be opening time somewhere, please God.

I was the first customer of the evening in the King's Arms. The barman, Matthew Hughes, said the old man and Emlyn had not put in an appearance during the afternoon opening, and hadn't things gone chronic what with these women getting knocked off and this bloody fog putting the kibosh on everything? ‘Mrs MT, man – Christ!' His brother had taken six hours to cover two miles of his bread round in the old van. Out in the country, see. ‘Know that old Tower on the old coast road there? My brother seen a battalion of police out there, man. Diggin' inside the bloody thing. Tell me what for?' Matt's questions were usually rhetorical, but this time he waited, eyebrows pointing, for an answer.

‘Ghosts, Matt,' I replied, and downed my drink and headed for the door. I wanted company, but I wanted to keep on the move, too – and a little of Matt went a long way at the best of times.

Amos would be back by now, surely? I called in at the Royal on the off chance, and killed conversation dead. No old man perched on a stool there, either. I could put a name to every face around the bar, but every face belonged to a stranger, suspicious and calculating and sly.

When they started talking again they were talking for my benefit, inviting comments. George Garston's lad gone funny while studying over there in London. Police put out a general warrant, so they had. ‘I've heard it's all got to do with some photographs taken some time ago,' someone said. It was then that I began to fear for Amos Ellyott's safety.

Mrs Edmunds had entered Amos's rooms in search of more examples of the art of a Polish Airman. The killer too. I shivered. And the killer would have worked it out that Amos Ellyott had not surrendered everything to the police. The old goat had never in his life made a present of secrets. He thrived on secrecy; had it on toast at every meal. The great detective: he'd played that role all around the town. Mrs Edmunds had been in possession of photographs, and had been silenced. And that made Amos the next on the list.

I didn't really care much whether or not Amos lived or died. But fearing for him, at that time was at least something positive, something to act on.

‘Oh – you is it, Philip?' Miss Williams said. ‘Strangers ringing my bell all day. Don't you think everything's gone strange?'

‘Is he back, Miss Williams?'

‘Who? Mr Rude? That's what I call him. Oh, yes – he came back – smelling of manure and soaking wet. Mr Rude and Smelly.' She tittered nervously and touched her mouth. ‘He's not going to stay in my house much longer I can tell you.'

‘Well – may I see him? Was Emlyn Morton with him?'

‘Both of them stinking,' she said. ‘Messed up my bathroom. Left smells everywhere – and out they went again. He called Emlyn Morton his bodyguard!'

‘Did he say where they were going?' Her narrow head shook a negative. ‘Did he leave a message, then?'

‘For you, Philip? Your name was never mentioned in my hearing.' Great, I thought, great. ‘Besides,' she added in a voice laced with spite, ‘you're not supposed to ask great detectives where they're going, are you? That's what I told George Garston's boy.'

‘Davy Garston? Has he been here?'

‘No more than an hour ago. He had his coat up – like this.' She cupped her face in her hands. ‘Wanted to speak to Mr Ellyott. He looked very strange. You all look very strange. I don't know what the world is coming to...'

‘Miss Williams – if Davy Garston comes back don't let him in, all right? On no account.'

She drew herself up to her full height, which wasn't much. ‘Don't you worry,' she said. ‘Nobody comes in this house. I've told the Police about David Garston.'

Davy Garston fits. I was trying to persuade myself as I climbed the stairs to Amos's rooms. I was in time to catch Mr Stubbs as he came out and turned the key in the door. Stubbs didn't like me. He didn't look as if he liked anyone very much.

‘Of course he isn't in. Been ordered to stop out, hasn't he?'

‘You've not seen him?'

Mr Stubbs shook his polished head. ‘Not today, thank God. I've told them it's a case of red herrings. They shouldn't keep listening to old cranks.'

‘The Tower, you mean?'

He gave me a superior smile. ‘The Tower if you like. Everything if you like.' He stepped past me on to the stairs. ‘There's been interference,' he added heavily. ‘You know about that – the interference that's gone on. You seen anything of Davy Garston?'

‘What d'you want Davy Garston for?'

He took a couple of aggressive steps back up. ‘You trying to be funny, mister?'

‘I don't have to try – comes naturally.' Davy Garston, I thought, and why not?

He was a match fit.

‘Listen, Sonny Jim – you are not in the clear by any manner of means.' Mr Stubbs was wearing his mean and nasty look.

I walked straight for him, and around him down the stairs and into the fog, into no man's land.

David Garston the match fit. He'd had a breakdown in London. He was hitting the bottle. He was one of Lilian's callers. He had medical knowledge and would know all about pressure points in the neck. A dead cert, old Davy. I went marching through the fog to the Crescent in order to give them the benefit of my reasoning. Davy Garston had links through his father with murky goings on in the past. There was a light on downstairs. I walked up the steps of the porch. Davy Garston would have access to a key for the Market Hall. Everything going for Davy. I raised a hand to knock on the porch door. Above all, Davy Garston had done a bunk and was on the run with a general warrant chasing after him... Oh, balls. I backed out of Idwal's porch and headed for the pub circuit in search of the great detective and his bodyguard.

It was a thin night for the brewers. The fog had sealed off the town, nailed the customers behind their own front doors – unless there was something good on the wireless, but that was hardly likely. Only the hard-core were out, blue veins in their noses, blood in their eyes, hands that had only recently stopped shaking, cigarettes going like Roman candles. And they were hostile, too, all staring and corner mouthed whispers and now and then a loud challenge across the room. ‘Reckon us boys ought to turn up for this Town Meeting they've called – eight o'clock tonight – all us interested parties. In the Town Hall.' The mean old heart of the town, the lynch mob who would never leave a drink on the counter to do anything, anytime. And everywhere I drew a blank. No master criminologist and his assistant sighted anywhere. They were probably nose down, like blood hounds in the fog, following clues.

I tried Ceri's house again, still without lights, no one at home, not even a comment from the old bird next door. I went tramping again, something burning now on the go, the long braying of the sirens, mocking me. Perhaps I ought to stay in one place for Amos to find me. But I couldn't stop. I went up and down Liverpool Street twice before I called in the house. Laura was sitting in the kitchen still, a new bottle of stout on the table. She indicated the envelope that had come for me, pushed through the letter box, and no sign of the sender in the street. The note was brief: ‘THE MARKET HALL AT 7. URGENT
'
. It was signed Andrei Ridetski.

 

The padlock in the gates of the Market Hall would not take my key. I examined it. A new padlock. Another message. I walked around the building to the garage at the back, and there again the police guard had been dropped. Everybody out with a pick and a shovel, everybody hunting Davy Garston in the fog.

I pulled at the central door of the garage. It opened. I stepped inside. The door was swinging shut behind me. And there was someone there. I could sense it. The hairs at the back of my neck responded to it. Black in there. Smell of oil. I thumbed the wheel on my lighter. It fired first time. Someone there all right. He had a twelve bore pointing straight at me. As much as I could see before my lighter went out. Black as the coal house now. George Garston's voice, high pitched, stretched tight, quavering, ‘Stick your hands up, Andy!'

The electric light bulb above my head exploded into life. For something less than a blinding second I thought the twelve bore had gone off. ‘Why, Philip, goodness me, is it you?' He sang it, standing there one foot in front of the other, pointing the gun at me. I was standing close to the back door of a huge old black car, straight out of the gangster flicks, caked with dust and hung with cobwebs. There were bits of old engines on the floor, God knows how many tyres, some milk churns and pieces of broken furniture. Behind Garston was the wall of the Market Hall, a narrow open doorway in it with a thick rope inside that made me think of the gallows. George Garston looked as if he was stuck there. ‘Philip,' he said, ‘did Andy send for you, too?'

‘Andy who?'

‘You know.' George was about done, his narrow face the colour and texture of lard, thick black stubble like a rash, black shadows under his eyes. ‘Andy Ridetski – have you seen him?'

‘I thought they were having a dig for him.' I motioned for him to lower the gun, but the man was stuck and the twin barrels, unfortunately, were stuck on me.

‘Digging for Ridetski,' he said, contempt in his voice. ‘He was a clever man, Andy. He could run rings around anybody.'

‘Yet you thought I was Andy.'

‘I never said that. Never. It was dark. I couldn't see who it was.' A silence fell between us. Then I suggested that it must be a strain holding a heavy gun like that, but he never moved and the black eyes of the gun stared fixedly at an area somewhere below my rib cage. I toyed with the idea of moving, to the left or to the right, just to see what he'd do. Only toyed with it, though.

‘We aren't making any progress,' I said. ‘What about some facts? Number one – Mr Ridetski is sending out invites. Number two – your David is wanted by the police.'

The gun dipped alarmingly, and I thought what have I done.

‘That is all nonsense, I tell you. David is completely innocent. I have proof. It's Mr Ellyott – he's plotting against me. Plotting everything.' His eyes flashed wild and white. ‘He's been digging in my yard! He's been leaving buttons on my doorstep!'

‘Buttons? What kind of buttons?'

‘From the RAF uniform! What do I want with buttons? What do I know about buttons?' The gun swung up then down to support the appeal in his voice. ‘RAF buttons on my doorstep! There are no RAF buttons in my yard. Philip – is Mr Ellyott insane?'

‘Almost certainly,' I said.

‘Saying lies about David. Saying lies about me. Saying lies about David and getting him nearly arrested. I never tried to shoot him. It was David!'

‘David tried to shoot Mr Ellyott? What about me? I was there as well.'

‘I never said that. No, no, no!' The blank and threatening eyes of the gun looked all around the garage. ‘David was shooting those old crows. He didn't know Mr Ellyott or anybody was there. It's his nerves, you see. The examinations for a doctor are very difficult.' He gave out a long, shuddering sigh. ‘If they can't find him then it's the fault of the police – because he isn't running away, because he's innocent!' The prominent Adam's apple in his scrawny neck rose and dipped but the gun remained steady, pointing.

‘Maybe your family shouldn't play with guns,' I suggested.

He didn't appear to hear me. ‘I couldn't say anything because they would have said things about David because his nerves are bad. People like a chance to be spiteful. But there was no intent you see. All those police digging inside that old Tower. That old thing. They wouldn't listen to me. It was in a very bad state and I set to at once, to mend it. Oh, some years ago now. I put some concrete inside it, you know – to hold it – and I tried to do a bit of pointing. But it isn't well built at all – not a proper tower or anything like that. It's the truth, Philip. You've got to tell Mr Ellyott. I'm just a poor working farmer. He's playing games with me. My son is completely innocent. I am completely innocent. It's David havin' trouble with his nerves – after the exams. You've got to explain to Mr Ellyott. You're his right-hand man.'

‘Tell him yourself. He's probably waiting up there.'

‘I was going to tell Andy to tell him. He was a good friend of mine, Andy...'

‘Is that why he sent you those photos?'

‘All false, them pictures. He'd made them up!'

‘You got another one a few days ago – was that fake too?'

The twelve bore waved about but there wasn't much menace in it. ‘All false them photos. He'd made them up. I took them to an expert and he showed me how Andy had done them up. For a joke, you see...'

‘Which is why you stopped handing out the cash?'

His voice dropped to a grating whisper. ‘You don't make a fool out of me, mister! Nobody makes a fool out of me.' An arrogant twist at his mouth.

‘OK – Ridetski sent you the first lot of pictures?'

‘I never said that. You're putting words in my mouth.'

‘Sorry – but do you know who sent you the last one?'

He gave out a growl which I took to be a laugh. ‘That Mr Ellyott of course.' He paused for some time, his mouth moving, eyes narrowing as he weighed up the way the conversation was going. ‘It's all supposing, isn't it? If I got some old photo – which I'm not saying I did – it would be Mr Ellyott. Another of his tricks.'