Even the soft dawn light could do nothing for the canal. It oozed through the city like an open sewer, oil slicks shimmering like rainbows in the sun, brown water dotted with industrial scum and suds, bits of driftwood and paper wrappings floating along with them. On one side was Ezekiel Woodruff’s scrapyard. Old Woodruff was a bit of an eccentric. He used to come around the streets with his horse and cart, yelling, ‘Any old iron,’ but now the government had other uses for scrap metal – supposedly to be used in aircraft manufacture – poor old Woodruff didn’t have a way to make his living any more. He’d already sent old Nell the carthorse to the knacker’s yard, where she was probably doing her bit for the war effort by helping to make the glue to stick the aircraft together. Old mangles and bits of broken furniture stuck up from the ruins of the scrapyard like shattered artillery after a battle.
On the other side, the bank rose steeply towards the backs of the houses on Canal Road, and the people who lived there seemed to regard it as their personal tip. Flies and wasps buzzed around old hessian sacks and paper bags full of God knew what. A couple of buckled bicycle tyres and a wheel-less pram completed the picture.
I stood and watched as Longbottom supervised the dragging, a slow and laborious process that seemed to be sucking all manner of unwholesome objects to the surface – except Johnny Critchley’s body.
I felt tense. At any moment I half expected the cry to come from one of the policemen in the boats that they had found him, half expected to see the small, pathetic bundle bob above the water’s surface. I didn’t think Colin Gormond had done anything to Johnny – nor Maurice, though DS Longbottom had seemed suspicious of him too – but I did think that, given how upset he was, Johnny might just have jumped in. He never struck me as the suicidal type, but I have no idea whether suicide enters the minds of nine-year-olds. All I knew was that he was upset about his father, and he was last seen skulking by the canal.
So I stood around with DS Longbottom and the rest as the day grew warmer, and there was still no sign of Johnny. After about three hours, the police gave up and went for bacon and eggs at Betty’s Cafe over on Chadwick Road. They didn’t invite me, and I was grateful to be spared both the unpleasant food and company. I stood and stared into the greasy water a while longer, unsure whether it was a good sign or not that Johnny wasn’t in the canal, then I decided to go and have a chat with Colin Gormond.
‘What is it, Colin?’ I asked him gently. ‘Come on. You can tell me.’
But Colin continued to stand with his back turned to me in the dark corner of his cramped living room, hands to his face, making eerie snuffling sounds, shaking his head. It was bright daylight outside, but the blackout curtains were still drawn tightly, and not a chink of light crept between their edges. I had already tried the light switch, but either Colin had removed the bulb or he didn’t have one.
‘Come on, Colin. This is silly. You know me. I’m Mr Bascombe. I won’t hurt you. Tell me what happened.’
Finally Colin turned silent and came out of his corner with his funny, shuffling way of walking. Someone said he had a club foot, and someone else said he’d had a lot of operations on his feet when he was a young lad, but nobody knew for certain why he walked the way he did. When he sat down and lit a cigarette, the match light illuminated his large nose, shiny forehead and watery blue eyes. He used the same match to light a candle on the table beside him, and then I saw them: the black eye, the bruise on his left cheek. DS Longbottom. The bastard.
‘Did you say anything to him?’ I asked, anxious that DS Longbottom might have beaten a confession out of Colin, without even thinking that Colin probably wouldn’t still be at home if that were the case.
He shook his head mournfully. ‘Nothing, Mr Bascombe. Honest. There was nothing I could tell him.’
‘Did you see Johnny Critchley yesterday, Colin?’
‘Aye.’
‘Where?’
‘Down by the canal.’
‘What was he doing?’
‘Just standing there chucking stones in the water.’
‘Did you talk to him?’
Colin paused and turned away before answering, ‘No.’
I had a brief coughing spell, his cigarette smoke working on my gassed lungs. When it cleared up, I said, ‘Colin, there’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there? You’d better tell me. You know I won’t hurt you, and I just might be the only person who can help you.’
He looked at me, pale eyes imploring. ‘I only called out to him, from the bridge, like, didn’t I?’
‘What happened next?’
‘Nothing. I swear it.’
‘Did he answer?’
‘No. He just looked my way and shook his head. I could tell then that he didn’t want to play. He seemed sad.’
‘He’d just heard his dad’s been killed.’
Colin’s already watery eyes brimmed with tears. ‘Poor lad.’
I nodded. For all I knew, Colin might have been thinking about his dad, too. Not many knew it, but Mr Gormond senior had been killed in the same bloody war that left me with my bad lungs and scarred face. ‘What happened next, Colin?’
Colin shook his head and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It was such a lovely day I just went on walking. I went to the park and watched the soldiers digging trenches, then I went for my cigarettes and came home to listen to the wireless.’
‘And after that?’
‘I stayed in.’
‘All evening?’
‘That’s right. Sometimes I go down to the White Rose, but…’
‘But what, Colin?’
‘Well, Mr Smedley, you know, the air-raid precautions man?’
I nodded. ‘I know him.’
‘He said my blackout cloth wasn’t good enough and he’d fine me if I didn’t get some proper stuff by yesterday.’
‘I understand, Colin.’ Good-quality, thick, impenetrable blackout cloth had become both scarce and expensive, which was no doubt why Colin had been cheated in the first place.
‘Anyway, what with that and the cigarettes…’
I reached into my pocket and slipped out a few bob for him. Colin looked away, ashamed, but I put it on the table and he didn’t tell me to take it back. I knew how it must hurt his pride to accept charity, but I had no idea how much money he made, or how he made it. I’d never seen him beg, but I had a feeling he survived on odd jobs and lived very much from hand to mouth.
I stood up. ‘All right, Colin,’ I said. ‘Thanks very much.’ I paused at the door, uncertain how to say what had just entered my mind. Finally I blundered ahead. ‘It might be better if you kept a low profile till they find him, Colin. You know what some of the people around here are like.’
‘What do you mean, Mr Bascombe?’
‘Just be careful, Colin, that’s all I mean. Just be careful.’
He nodded gormlessly and I left.
As I shut Colin’s front door, I noticed Jack Blackwell standing on his doorstep, arms folded, a small crowd of locals around him, their shadows intersecting on the cobbled street. They kept glancing towards Colin’s house, and when they saw me come out they all shuffled off except Jack himself, who gave me a grim stare before going inside and slamming his door. I felt a shiver go up my spine, as if a goose had stepped on my grave, as my dear mother used to say, bless her soul, and when I got home I couldn’t concentrate on my book one little bit.
By the following morning, when Johnny had been missing over thirty-six hours, the mood in the street had started to turn ugly. In my experience, when you get right down to it, there’s no sorrier spectacle, nothing much worse or more dangerous, than the human mob mentality. After all, armies are nothing more than mobs, really, even when they are organized to a greater or lesser degree. I’d been at Ypres, as you know, and there wasn’t a hell of a lot you could tell me about military organization. So when I heard the muttered words on doorsteps, saw the little knots of people here and there, Jack Blackwell flitting from door to door like a political canvasser, I had to do something, and I could hardly count on any help from DS Longbottom.