The police car slid quietly down the long, empty street. The widely-spaced lighting left pools of blackness midway between the overhead standards.
“Creepy sort of place,” said Detective Sergeant Brannigan.
“More cheerful by daylight,” agreed Detective Constable Wrangle. He was driving the car.
“Pull up for a moment. I want to have a look.”
The roadway was enclosed on both sides by a wooden wall made of ten-foot planks set vertically in the ground and held together by rows of metal strip. The bottom of the fence was buried in a thick belt of marram grass. Alder and thorn, the trees that grow quickest when men depart, had pushed their shoots through the cracks and were already tall enough to top the wall.
“Been like this long?”
“Long as I can remember,” said Wrangle. “Must be more’n six years since they shut the East Docks.”
“What used to be there?”
“Offices and sheds. Marine stores, ship repairers, bonded warehouses, places like that. When the ships stopped coming here, they got no customers so they all cleared out.”
“I remember it how it used to be in the old days,” said Brannigan. “When I was a kid, we lived over on Porthead Road. I remember when the docks was crowded with ships. Albion, Canada, Russia, Quebec, Princess – busy all day long, and most of the night, too, you could see the loading going on. Nothing at all, now.”
“Bloody shame,” agreed Wrangle. He wondered if this was a moment when he could offer the Sergeant a cigarette. He hadn’t known him long enough to be sure. The Sergeant was a recent arrival in the Division and was reputed to be hot on discipline.
“Bloody mismanagement,” said Brannigan. “Crowd of bloody old women. Think of nothing but their own pockets.” He kicked the planking thoughtfully. “You ever been inside?”
“Once or twice. Few years ago the Friary Lane crowd started using one of the empty sheds as a store for stuff they’d nicked from the goods yard at Malvern Steps. We got a tip-off and raided the place. Caught them with their pants down.” He grinned. “Once you’re in, there’s no way out, see.”
“Plenty of ways out on the other side, surely? I remember the kids used to get in and out like rabbits.”
“You’d have to be a very small rabbit to do it now,” said Wrangle. “They’ve put up a twelve-foot fence on three sides. Diamond mesh. Not big enough to get your toe in. You’d get over it with a grapnel and a rope easy enough, but not if you was in a hurry.”
“So you nicked the lot?”
“That’s right. They got a handful each. They’d just about be out by now. Not that they give us a lot of trouble here. There’s nothing to attract them.”
“Then why do they bother about that?” said Brannigan. He pointed to a notice on the wall which said, “Warning. This place is patrolled by Guard Dogs. Keep out.”
“That’s a load of cock. They did have a dog in there once. Soon after they shut it down, that was. It disappeared.”
Brannigan climbed back into the car. He said, “Go on. You tell me. I suppose the rats ate it.”
“The rats or the toe-rags. They got some way of getting in and they sleep in the sheds. In the summer, that is.”
“Hold it,” said Brannigan.
In the shadows ahead something had moved. Wrangle flicked on the spotlight.
“Like I said,” said Wrangle. “One of our hotel’s five-star customers.”
The tramp, pinned against the wall by the blade of light, had thrown up an arm to protect his eyes. He was skeleton-thin, fragile enough to be blown away by the first puff of wind.
“Let’s have a look at you,” said Brannigan. He climbed out of the car. The tramp slowly lowered his arm.
“Why, if it isn’t Percy!” said Wrangle.
The tramp smiled nervously.
“You know him?”
“One of our regulars.”
“What are you up to, Percy?”
“Just taking a little walk, Sergeant.”
Brannigan checked for a moment. It was the voice that stopped him. The voice and intonation of an educated man. Then he said, “You’ve got no right to be hanging round at this time of night. I’ve a good mind to run you in.”
“You can’t do that,” said the tramp. “I have the wherewithal for a night’s lodgings.”
He held out one hand, palm upwards, with a shining fifty-pence piece in it.
Brannigan knocked his hand up, and the coin went spinning into the gutter. The tramp dropped on his knees, whining like a child, and clutched at it before it disappeared down the grating. Then he got to his feet, swaying slightly.
“You hit me,” he said. “You had no right to do that.”
“Don’t you tell me what I’ve got the right to do and what I haven’t got the right to do. People like you, I’ve got the right to do anything I like with. You’re rubbish. You’re nothing.”
He stretched out his big hands, caught the tramp by the lapels of his coat and lifted him. He weighed no more than a child. He held him for a moment, his face a few inches from his own. He could see the tears of weakness and fury trickling down the caved-in cheeks.
“I’m a citizen,” said the tramp. “I’ve the right of every citizen to be treated fairly.”
Brannigan put him down on the pavement with a thump, turned about and climbed back into the car.
“Does he always carry on like that?”
“Only when he’s lit,” said Wrangle.
“Is that right?”
“Hopped to the eyebrows.”
“Where the hell would a man like that get the money to buy dope?”
“I expect there’s money in the family,” said Wrangle. “Must have been. You can see he’s been educated.”
“Hasn’t done him much good, has it?”
As the car moved off he looked back. The tramp had sunk back into the shadows and become part of them.
“It’s funny to think,” said Wrangle, who was feeling philosophical, “that when Percy was a kid his old man sends him to Eton and Harrow and all that caper and thinks, one day my son may be prime minister.”
“It’s mothers think about their daughters that way now,” said Brannigan sourly. He was a male radical.
For a full five minutes after the car had gone, the tramp stayed still, like an animal that has been frightened. When he moved he kept close to the fence. As he walked his lips were working. He seemed to be counting. Two lamp standards and six paces later he stopped again.
At this point, a plane tree on the far side of the paling had grown to such a height that it was already well clear of the top. Its strong roots, growing outwards, had undermined the footing of that particular plank and had worked it loose. Over the years, the parasites which feed on wood had followed the roots down and completed the job. The plank looked secure enough, but in fact it was held in position only by the three lines of metal strip. The first and the third lines had been carefully severed, so that when the tramp pressed on the bottom of the plank it swung inwards, pivoting on the centre strip. The tramp went down on to hands and knees and wriggled through without difficulty, pushing the plank back into position behind him.
Once he was inside, it was clear that he was following an established track. After climbing over a low railing he came out on to a cinder path which wound its way for a hundred yards or more between piles of abandoned and rusting machinery, skirted a pit full of oily water and ended at a solid-looking pair of wooden gates. The moon had come out from behind the clouds, and there was enough light to read the name painted in faded white letters: Hendrixsons, Shipping Agents and Chandlers.
The tramp bypassed the gates quite simply by squeezing through one of the many gaps in the corrugated-iron fence. Inside there was a concrete yard. The left-hand side was open shed. The back and the third side, which had once been a smart office block, was now a sad parody of itself. There was a rusty grill over the front door, fastened with a chain. The windows were barred. There were gaps in the roof, and every grime-smeared pane of glass had been shattered, as though by shrapnel.
The tramp made for the open shed. A flight of wooden steps at the back led up to the first storey. This was full of every sort of debris and refuse. There were broken packing cases, cardboard cartons, the straw skirts which careful packers put round bottles, heaps of rags, piles of sacking and hundreds upon hundreds of old newspapers. It was a rats’ nest, enlarged to human proportions.
There were human rats in it. As the tramp climbed the steps he heard them stirring. He hoped that no one had trespassed into his favourite bedroom. This was a man-sized carton in the far corner, which had once been used for the transport of an electrical generator. It was lying on one side and was half full of newspaper and straw. It was empty. Good.
The tramp crawled into it and wriggled down among the debris. As he was doing so, he paused and sniffed. Someone, not far away, had been smoking a cigarette. He twisted round and poked his head out of the doorway of his cardboard room.
A voice from the darkness said, “Watcheer, Percy.”
The tramp grunted. He recognised the voice. It was a middle-aged layabout called Irish Mick. He said, “If you go on smoking, Mick, one fine night we’ll all go up in flames.”
“Sure, and some night we’ll all die any road. What’s the odds?”
Other voices were muttering in the darkness. Conversations interrupted by the new arrival were starting up again. Whispered, husky, confidential colloquies which sometimes went on through the April night as the homeless men confided their meaningless secrets to each other.