But just then a motor roared on the other side of the hydrant station. Gently belted through the cars, hurled himself round the small building. He caught only a glimpse of a powerful bike cornering sharply into a back street, its black-leathered rider lying it close, its registration plate invisible. The pensioner came stuttering after Gently.
‘That’s him!’ he exclaimed, ‘That’s him!’
Gently stood clutching his box. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s him.’
He returned to the milk bar where the navvy remained dutifully guarding the entrance. Leach was sitting on one of the bar-stools, the blonde was snivelling into a handkerchief. Leach’s eyes glittered when he saw Gently come back with the pensioner only, but he didn’t say anything, kept his face sullenly averted. Gently confronted him.
‘Who was he?’ he asked.
‘How should I know?’ Leach said. ‘I don’t know nothing about this caper. I’m being used, that’s what it is.’
‘You,’ Gently said to the blonde. ‘Who were you expecting to pick that box up?’
‘She don’t know nothing,’ Leach put in quickly. ‘She wouldn’t be such a bloody fool as to know anything.’
‘That’s right,’ the blonde sobbed, ‘I don’t know nothing. I serve behind the bar, that’s all I do.’
‘Give me that envelope,’ Gently said.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ sobbed the blonde.
‘Just the envelope,’ Gently said. ‘The one this gentleman here handed you.’
‘He didn’t hand me no envelope.’
‘Let’s keep polite about it,’ Gently said. ‘He handed you a fat manilla envelope, after which you gave him the chocolates.’
‘It’s down the front of her dress,’ said the navvy unexpectedly. ‘I saw her shove it there while you were out.’
‘So?’ Gently said.
The blonde looked murderous. She felt in her bosom, tossed the envelope on the bar. Gently lifted it by one corner and let the contents slip out. They were a bundle of forty or so pound notes, old ones, held together with a rubber band.
‘That’s a lot of money for a box of chocolates.’
‘It was owed us,’ Leach snapped. ‘We don’t know nothing about what was in the chocolates.’
‘But you’ll know who owed you the money.’
Leach made a rude suggestion. ‘Bloody find out,’ he added. ‘We’ve said all we’re going to say.’
Gently sat amiably on another bar-stool. He slowly filled and lit his pipe. When it was alight he blew two rings, placing one of them in the other.
‘You’re in a bit of a jam, Leach,’ he said.
Leach was impolite again.
‘You’ll be going away,’ Gently continued. ‘You’ll be going away for quite a spell. This isn’t the only box, is it? You’ve been filling some more down in the cellar. You’ve got a stock of reefers here, you’re the local distributor for the top boys.’
‘I’m being used, I tell you,’ Leach said. ‘I’ve never seen them things before.’
Gently shook his head. ‘You won’t make it stand up, Joe. Look at it squarely. You’re due for a rest.’
‘I ought to have pitched you,’ Leach said, spitting.
‘We’ll let that pass,’ Gently said. ‘But you’re in a jam right up to your ears, and if you’re wise you’ll stop trying to buck it. Because a kind word could make a difference to you, Joe. And I’m the one who could put in the kind word.’
‘You think I can’t see it coming?’ Leach said.
‘Who was this box for?’ Gently asked.
‘I wouldn’t know, would I?’ Leach said, sneering. It don’t happen to have a name and address.’
‘Where are you getting the stuff from, Joe?’
‘Look for the trademark on it,’ said Leach.
‘It’ll be maybe worth a year to you, Joe.’
‘Yeah, but I value my health higher,’ Leach said.
‘I’ll tell you something else,’ the navvy said. ‘I keep my eyes about me, I do.’
‘You keep quiet, you bastard,’ Leach snapped.
‘You better look in that coffee machine,’ the navvy said.
Leach came off the stool in a whirlwind of fists. Gently caught him, heaved, sent him crashing among the tables. He went to the coffee machine, the lid of which was awry. He looked inside. In the bubbling black coffee floated a green-covered notebook. He fished it out with a fork.
‘Blimey!’ said the navvy, looking at Leach.
‘Nice work,’ Gently said. ‘We could use your sort in the Force.’
He separated some pages of the sodden notebook. It contained dates, figures, and some notes of money. And on the inside of the cover appeared a telephone number with a London code prefixed to it.
‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘You’ve been a little careless, Joe.’
Leach kept sitting on the floor. He said a number of things that were not nice.
CHAPTER SIX
Gently hung on at Castlebridge while the local police were in action, but neither Leach nor the blonde seemed inclined to be more helpful. Two other counter assistants arrived at the milk bar during the morning, but on interrogation it was soon apparent that they knew nothing of the trade in reefers. A considerable haul was made in the cellar. Leach had concealed his store under the planking of the dais. It consisted of fifteen sauce-bottle cartons each containing a thousand reefers, while another three thousand were found packed in the boxes of chocolates.
The local inspector, Cartwright, was dubiously cordial towards Gently, at times was plainly miffed by this discovery in his area. When he elicited that Gently had wasted no time in talking to the Yard about the matter he became respectfully frigid and held himself at a distance.
Gently’s call had been to Pagram, his opposite number in the Central Office, giving him the telephone number he had found in Leach’s notebook.
‘Is this helping your case?’ Pagram had asked him.
Gently didn’t know himself. ‘If it takes you Bethnal way,’ he’d said, ‘I shall like to know about that. A lot of the overspill population has come to Latchford from Bethnal. You know we’ve got Sid Bixley here. Keep his name where you can see it.’
Pagram’d chuckled. ‘Is he your bunnie?’
‘I’m interested,’ Gently had said. ‘He’s got an alibi that seems to cover him, but it’s only sixty per cent proof.’
The trouble was there was no way of bringing Bixley’s alibi to proof. That he’d left the milk bar fifteen minutes after Lister had been established by fairly reliable witnesses. Some Castlebridge acquaintances who knew them both had seen Lister leaving early, they’d invited him to have one for the road and had been surprised by his abrupt refusal. Then fifteen minutes had elapsed while they drank that last shake, and when they left they had been accompanied by Bixley and Anne Wicks. In between Elton had left. He’d been seen leaving soon after Lister. Yet it was possible that this order had been changed over the twenty or so miles to the scene of the crash. Lister might have ridden the first part slowly, Elton might have lost some time, say, at Oldmarket. The alibi was a good one but it didn’t completely exclude Bixley.
In a quiet corner of the milk bar Gently had interrogated the pensioner. His name was Edwin Jukes. He badly wanted to be helpful. He recounted carefully how he’d met the ‘young man’ as he was skirting along the car park, and how he’d been saluted as ‘Dad’ and offered the ten shillings to fetch the chocolates.
‘How old would this young man be?’ Gently asked.
‘That I couldn’t say,’ Jukes quavered.
‘Twenty? Thirty?’ Gently suggested.
‘Oh, he was a youngster all right,’ Jukes said.
‘What colour were his hair and eyes?’ asked Gently.
‘Well,’ Jukes said, ‘he was wearing a hat thing. I didn’t notice his eyes. I don’t see very grand. I’m nigh on eighty if I live to see Christmas.’
‘Was he tall?’ Gently asked.
‘He was taller than I am,’ Jukes said. ‘And I’m five foot seven, if that’s any help.’
‘Did he speak like a local boy?’
Jukes was baffled by that one. ‘I can’t,’ he said, ‘say he did, nor I can’t say he didn’t.’
He was able however to confirm Gently’s impression that the youth was dressed all in black: black helmet, black leathers, black boots, and black gloves. He’d produced the envelope from a breast pocket without removing the gloves and had promised to pay the ten shillings when Jukes returned with the chocolates. The person he wished to avoid, he said, was the blonde at the counter.