‘I always like to ask someone’s advice when I’m in danger of making a fool of myself! You are perfectly right about Johnson, of course. No jury would give him twenty minutes.’
‘Then we’ll go ahead and charge him, sir?’
‘No, just get him to amend his statement.’
‘But I don’t understand-!’
Gently’s grin grew broader. ‘That’s exactly what Johnson was trying to tell us…’
Once more he was rebelling against the accepted order, and once more he was positive that he was doing the right thing. He wished that he could have explained himself to Stephens, but how could one explain an unreasoning intuition? It was a faculty which had to grow, there was no passing it on.
As it was, he simply patted Stephens on the arm.
‘Don’t look so upset! I’m going to put a tail on him. If he tries to do a bunk we’ll pull him in fast enough. In the meantime, I don’t want to tie my hands with Johnson.’
‘But if ever there was a case where circumstantial evidence…’
‘I know. But Johnson made one very good point. We haven’t been here long and we don’t really know the people… why he said it doesn’t matter. We can afford to take our time.’
In the end he had Stephens partly propitiated; the young detective, though apprehensive, was eager to follow where Gently led. Johnson’s statement was revised, typed out and signed. Nobody had very much to say apart from the bare requirements of the transaction.
‘But I can take it that I’m still number one on your list…?’
If Johnson was surprised to be getting away with it, he was at pains to conceal the fact.
‘For the present I want you to stay within the city jurisdiction. If you try to go outside it you will be instantly arrested.’
The detective who was to tail him, a raw-boned local with prodding dark eyes, had been instructed that coyness was not essential to the contract. From the window they watched him setting out after his quarry — Johnson must have known he was there, although he didn’t turn his head.
‘I suppose it’s all right, sir, to let him go like that…?’ All Stephens’s uneasiness returned at the sight.
‘Come on — let’s go to bed! It’s getting on for two already, and in the morning we’ve got a couple of statements to take.’
The hotel into which they had been booked was only a short distance from the marketplace and as they walked there, step for step, they didn’t meet a single person. A train whistle from the Thorne Yards was the only sound to break the stillness and above them, in a clear sky, a new moon was scratched in silver.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘ Superintendent Gently.’
‘Damn it — you get up early, Gently!’
Gently grinned, snuggling himself a little deeper in his pillows. It was in fact five minutes to eight and he could hear the weather being announced: ‘An anticyclone over the Azores is continuing almost stationary…’
A cup of tea stood on the cabinet from which he had unlatched the phone, the sun was streaming through the window and the traffic was busy below. From next door, where there was a bathroom, he could hear the comfortable sound of a filling bath; in his imagination he could see the water descending and savour the voluptuous fragrance of bath salts and steam.
‘I’m sorry if I got you up…’
‘My dear fellow, don’t waste apologies. Though at this hour in the morning — you remember what Caruso said about it? “Madam, I can’t spit
…!” Well, it’s like that with me: I need at least a pint of coffee to turn me into a human being.’
‘I’d like to see you later this morning, sir.’
‘Then you’ll have to come along to my studio, Gently. I’m a professional, you know, not a mewling amateur — I stand to my easel between ten and one.’
Gently chuckled to himself. How the phrase suited Mallows! One could visualize his stocky figure planted, fencer-like, before a canvas. Off-hand he couldn’t remember ever having seen a small Mallows picture; they were created for noble rooms and for great carved and gilded frames.
‘I’ll be along at about eleven if I’m not held up.’
‘Good. Will you be on duty, or could you stand a drop of sherry?’
‘I’ll be on duty…’
‘Never mind. I promise not to tell a soul. And I suppose it’s no use asking what you’re digging after now?’
Gently hung up, still chuckling. One couldn’t help being taken with Mallows. Mirrored in him, one could perceive a long line of master painters. They were professionals and proud of it! They had no time for self-centred aesthetes. They were the strong, the prolific creators, on whose brushes few doubts ever sat, and they produced those arsenals of work from which the small men and critics dissented.
He had the papers on his breakfast table and found that the Johnson case was overshadowed. The Yard had made their concerted sweep on the information of Herbie the Fence, and at last they had got their hands on Jimmy Fisher’s executioner.
SCOTLAND YARD STRIKES — SLAYER OF GANGSTER ARRESTED
38 Arrests in Mammoth East End Swoop
Warehouse battle — Constable shot.
In a series of raids carried out last night, Scotland Yard and the Metropolitan Police virtually wiped out the rival gangs of East End warehouse bandits. Acting on a tip-off, they surrounded a warehouse in Poplar. At the same time swoops were made on premises in Stepney, Wapping and Whitechapel.
At Poplar, where a gun battle developed, a constable was shot and seriously wounded. The gunman was later arrested with five members of his gang. They are expected to be able to assist the police in their inquiries into the killing of the notorious Jimmy Fisher…
The Scotland Yard officer in charge of the operation was Superintendent Pagram, of Homicide. Superintendent Gently was also working on the case, but left it yesterday to take charge of the Shirley Johnson murder.
The raids came as the culmination of long weeks of arduous routine work…
Gently wrinkled his nose and passed the paper across to Stephens. So they had finally done it: they had laid Jimmy Fisher’s ghost. There was, naturally, a good bit of ‘arduous routine’ still to be undertaken, but now it was coasting home on a downhill gradient; while, if they had recovered the gun, even that might be abbreviated.
‘I’m glad they got around to mentioning your name, sir.’
Secretly, so was Gently; after all, he had earned it! And from the way it was put… if you read between the lines… All in all, he finished his breakfast in a mood of quiet complacence.
At Headquarters he had to confer with Hansom and Superintendent Walker, two gentlemen who were bound to be critical of the way he had treated Johnson. Unlike Stephens, however, they had precedents to go on, and they warily refrained from open disagreement with Gently.
‘It turns out, then, that Johnson has got a rip-snorting motive?’
Hansom couldn’t help dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.
‘You could pull him in at any time, and make a charge stick?’
‘At any time I feel that I’m one hundred per cent sure of him…’
He left them in the Super’s office to talk over his sins, Stephens, in the meantime, having fetched Dolly to make her statement. It amused him to watch Stephens’s reactions to the attractive barmaid; aware of his susceptibility, the Inspector became extremely punctilious.
‘You appreciate that we have to put it in statement form, miss…’
‘If you’ll be good enough to read it through, miss…’
‘Yes, miss. Sign it there…’
In the end it was doubtful who was most impressed by the other — Dolly, it was certain, had an eye for Stephens’s good looks. He saw her out through the foyer and they parted in mutual embarrassment. Coming back, he sat thoughtfully silent while his senior brooded over the statement.
‘What do you think about Aymas calling Mrs Johnson a liar?’