‘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.’
‘Not just Betty.’
‘Betty and the rest. It’s all one in my mind,’ she said. ‘If she’d been a decent sort of girl she wouldn’t have led him on so far.’
‘Just briefly,’ Gently said, ‘did anything happen during the evening?’
‘I played bridge,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘The Dawsons came over. I played bridge.’
In the report it said she’d been rung at a quarter to one on the Wednesday morning. Later that day she’d seen the body and identified the motorcycle and some clothes. Her doctor, Setters had said, had given her a strong sedative, but after the initial shock she had declined to use it.
A car pulled in to the driveway.
‘That’s Mother with the kiddies,’ Mrs Lister said.
‘One more question,’ Gently said, ‘then we’ll stop being a nuisance to you. What sort of cigarettes did your son smoke?’
Mrs Lister looked puzzled. ‘Guards, I think.’
‘Did he ever talk of sticks?’ Gently asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘What are sticks?’
‘Reefers,’ Gently said.
Still Mrs Lister looked puzzled.
‘Cigarettes,’ he explained, ‘with a percentage of marijuana added.’
‘Oh,’ she said. She flushed slightly. ‘That’s dope, isn’t it?’ she said.
Gently nodded. ‘That’s dope.’
‘No,’ she said quickly, ‘he wouldn’t. No.’
‘He never mentioned them at all?’
‘Never,’ she said. ‘Not Johnny.’
‘You didn’t suspect he might be smoking them? They have a strong, heady aroma.’
She hesitated. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Johnny just wouldn’t have done it.’
Gently rose. ‘Would it very much upset you if we looked through his room?’ he said.
Her flush was heightened. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘You can do that if you want to.’
She rose and led the way out into the hall and down a short passage. They passed a door behind which could be heard the voices of children in expostulation. She checked there but then continued. She opened a door at the end of the passage. It gave into a small bedroom with an enormous window that faced the trees.
‘Johnny’s room,’ she said, catching her breath. She went to the window and stood looking out.
Gently entered. He sniffed delicately. Stale cigarette smoke and newish furnishings. A bedroom suite in unpolished oak, a bedside cabinet, a table. On the table was a record player and a plastic rack stuffed with records. In the top of the cabinet there were books. There was a yellow Penguin on the Buddhist Scriptures. A glass ashtray stood on the cabinet, recently emptied but not washed. A working jacket hung over a chair. Some boots were shoved underneath.
Gently opened the door of the cabinet. It contained magazines, a camera, junk. The dressing-table drawers were crammed with clothes and in the tallboy was clean bedlinen. Setters went over the wardrobe. He had exploring fingers like a pickpocket’s. Soon he closed the door noiselessly and gave a small, negative shrug. Shoes, boots were all empty. Nothing was hidden about the bed.
‘About how long was Johnny in here at lunchtime on Tuesday?’ Gently asked.
‘Only a moment,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘He went straight in and came straight out again.’
Gently went to the doorway, stood looking round the room. He walked across to the record player, snapped the catches, lifted the lid. A record lay on the turntable. He lifted the record. Underneath, wrapped in a serviette, were five unbranded cigarettes. They were clumsily rolled in a greyish paper and made from a coarse brown tobacco. He showed them to Setters.
‘Like the others you’ve seen round here?’ he asked.
Setters nodded. He turned one of them over with his nail.
Mrs Lister came forward, stared at the five cigarettes. She was very pale.
‘And they’re reefers?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Gently said. ‘They’re reefers.’
‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘Oh God, not Johnny. It’s beyond me, I can’t believe it. There’s no meaning any longer.’ She began to laugh hysterically, the tears plunging down her cheeks.
‘I’m sorry,’ Gently said.
‘There’s no meaning,’ she repeated.
‘We’ll have to take these,’ Gently said. ‘We’ll perhaps find out who’s been pushing them.’
‘There’s no meaning,’ she went on. ‘And I’m so tired of it, so tired of it. There’s no point in it all. And I’m so tired, so tired.’
Some feet scuffled in the passage. A little boy stood in the doorway. He was six or seven, fair-haired, wearing a school blazer with a huge badge. His eyes were round. His mouth was working. His chubby hands were balled hard. He suddenly ran screaming to Mrs Lister.
‘Mummy. Mummy. Mummy. Mummy.’
He buried his face in her stomach. She held him to her with both hands.
‘Peter,’ she said. ‘Peter.’
‘Mummy, mummy,’ he wailed.
‘Peter.’
He twisted round. He stared at Gently. There was a flinching pucker in his face.
‘Go away policeman,’ he said. ‘Go away from my mummy.’
‘No, Peter,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘He’s a kind man, Peter.’
‘Go away,’ Peter said. ‘Policeman go away.’
Gently made a sign to Setters.
They took the reefers and went.
‘Progress,’ Setters said as they drove away from Chase Drive. ‘And me the dumbest screw in the force not to have looked for those sticks sooner. Do you think she really didn’t know?’
‘She didn’t know,’ Gently said. ‘She had suspicions, maybe, but she didn’t want to believe them.’
‘So he was smoking,’ Setters said. ‘That alters the picture just a bit. They were both of them smoking. Might have been high when they crashed.’
‘Yet he leaves the sticks at home,’ Gently said. ‘Why was that?’
‘Just his home supply,’ Setters said. ‘You can maybe buy them in Castlebridge.’
‘Did you find any at the crash?’ Gently asked.
‘No,’ Setters said. ‘But that proves nothing.’
‘You’d have thought they’d have had a spare one about them,’ Gently said.
Setters rubbed his cheek. ‘The girl didn’t have any at home,’ he said. ‘When the medic told us we sent round, but we found nothing there. And it’s right, she ought to have had some. She had a case in her bag. It just wouldn’t be that chummie Elton whipped those reefers, you think?’
‘You’ve met him,’ Gently said.
‘Yeah,’ Setters said slowly. ‘Pass back. He isn’t the type. He’s next to human. He wouldn’t have gone through her bag.’
‘I’ll want to talk to her,’ Gently said. ‘Is there a chance of me doing it?’
‘I’ll ring the blood-house,’ Setters said. ‘But she hasn’t been conscious again since.’
They parked at H.Q. and went through to Setters’ office. He rang the hospital. Betty Turner was still in a coma. Gently had spread out the reefers and the serviette on a sheet of paper on Setter’s desk. He sat looking at them while Setters phoned, pushing them about with the tip of a pen-holder.
Setters hung up.
‘You’ll have heard,’ he said.
Gently shrugged, put down the pen-holder.