Chapter Nineteen

What Happened on

 

Friday

Detective-Constable Billy Paterson was twenty-three, a tall, cheerful, ruddy officer whose interests were rugby football, beer and girls in that order. He was the best front-row forward in the police team, and one of the two hardest drinkers. He was not noted for his subtlety, and he was an ideal man for the task of making himself conspicuous.

On Friday morning he was waiting with a colleague at the end of the road when Paul Vane came out of the house in his car, which he left at the station. Paterson was dropped off there, and travelled up in the same compartment as Vane. During the morning he made his identity known to the doorman at Timbals and sat in the entrance hall reading comics. At lunchtime Vane went out to a pub, ate a sandwich and drank two large whiskies. Paterson was round the other side of the bar nursing a pint of bitter, and Vane noticed him for the first time. On the way back to the office he looked round to see if Paterson was following.

Paterson made a bit of a variation in the routine by spending most of the afternoon in a coffee bar opposite the office. He had obtained a fresh stock of comics, which he found irresistibly amusing, so that he was not bored. It did not take much to amuse him. Indeed, his only worry about this particular job was that he believed Friday to be his unlucky day for tailing suspects. The worry was based on the undoubted fact that he had twice lost suspects he had been tailing on that day.

Vane left the office at a quarter to six, and Paterson trailed after him. Again he sat in the same compartment. As they left Rawley station Vane stopped as though about to speak, and then walked on. A squad car was waiting for Paterson, and they followed Vane home. They saw him go in, then parked down the road.

‘You staying?’ Paterson asked.

His companion was Tiny Noble, a saturnine figure in his thirties who was disappointed that he had missed promotion. ‘No need for two of us to waste our bloody time. I’ll be back at ten to relieve you.’

He was collected five minutes later. Paterson settled down happily with another comic.

 

The house was unwelcoming. Cigar butts lay in the ashtrays, the washing-up had not been done, there was nothing in the oven. Alice was evidently playing bridge. Paul Vane looked out through the front window at the car parked down the road. He felt as uneasy as though some small animal were crawling over his skin. He looked in the larder for something that could be heated for supper, but could not face the thought of doing it.

The note was on the living-room table.

 

Paul

I am going away. Sorry, but it’s the only way. If the police are going to ask questions about those girls I can’t take it, why should I? That and everything else. I have tried, though you may not think so. I don’t think there’s any use in trying to pick up the pieces. We’re just incompatible, that’s all.

Didn’t have time to cook anything for you. Suggest you go out and eat at that new place you mentioned the other day.

 

Alice

PS Have told Jennifer. She wasn’t surprised.

 

He read the words with the disbelief people feel for something contemplated so often that they have become sure it will never happen. Alice never played jokes, yet he felt that some sort of joke was being played here and that he would find her working out a bridge problem – perhaps in Jennifer’s bedroom? He actually went in there and looked round. Then he went into their own bedroom, looked at the empty dressing-table and, as though unconvinced, opened drawers, flung cupboards dramatically wide. Clothes had been taken, but not everything had gone. He found a kind of comfort in the fact that she had made the beds. Would she have done that if she were not secretly intending to return? Perhaps she had put the clothes down in the cellar to add to the shock he was receiving? Perhaps the suitcases were still down there.

He went down to the cellar. The suitcases had gone.

 

Zook-zlook-glook, said Porgity Bear as he saw the swaying rump of Lavinia May moving down the High Street. Holy daggity, he thought as she turned into Charlie Beast’s, where Bolo Bunny was playing Big Chief Firewater for the mineral rights on Sharkfire Island. Porgity Bear ran up the wall, peered in the window at Charlie Beast’s. Dumbfounding doggerel, he cried. What he saw inside made him relax his hold on a drainpipe. He teetered over space.

What had Porgity seen? Billy Paterson turned the page in delight. He was suddenly aware of an alien sound, and in the next moment Vane’s Cortina moved past him and made a left turn with a shriek of tyres. Cursing, he started the engine, which did not fire until the second attempt, turned the car, and followed down Burgess Road. The Cortina was a quarter of a mile ahead of him, and had made another left turn.

Paterson looked at his watch. Twenty forty-three, and the light was beginning to fail. He drove with one hand, lifted the telephone with the other, made radio contact and gave his position. To do this he slowed down fractionally as he made the left turn into Cary Avenue. He was appalled to see that there was no Cortina ahead. Roads led off Cary Avenue to left and right, and he had to cut his speed to look down them. He did not see the Cortina. The end of Cary Avenue ran into London Road one way, Manholt Place the other. Cars were passing. He did not know which way the Cortina had gone.

He spoke to HQ. ‘Paterson. I’ve lost contact.’

The duty officer was a short-tempered man named Pink. ‘You’ve what? You were parked outside his bloody house.’

‘He shot out like a bomb. By the time I’d turned–’

‘You’ll have a bomb under you, lad, when the chief gets word of this. Give me his number. Then cruise around, keep in touch, try not to fall asleep at the wheel.’

Tailing a man on Friday, Paterson thought, I might have known. He folded the Porgity Bear comic, the cause of his trouble, and was about to throw it out of the window. He tucked it into his raincoat pocket instead, and started to move down London Road.

 

The tobacconist’s was shut, like the other shops in London Road. There was not much traffic. It was almost dark. Sally said, ‘He’s not coming.’

‘It’s only just nine. Don’t be so fidgety, sweetie pie. If Abel Giluso appears there are two of us to deal with him.’

‘Have you got the letter?’

‘Of course.’ She took it out of her large fabric bag. ‘I shall produce it, say, “You are Abel Giluso, my name is Pamela Sexpot and I claim the right to move on to a higher plane of pleasure.” I mean, did you ever hear anything so corny?’ Pamela’s make-up was smooth as enamel, her hair glinted golden, her miniskirt showed elegant legs.

‘I don’t know about corny. It frightens me.’

‘You haven’t seen my magic protector. I don’t mean the pill.’ She delved into the bag and came up with a police whistle. ‘One blast on this and Abel will take to his heels.’

‘There’s something funny about this road.’

‘Oh, sweetie, be your age. It’s a perfectly ordinary road, so ordinary it’s boring.’ Two boys on the other side whistled, then crossed. A passing car slowed momentarily, speeded up again.

The boys were about sixteen. Their small cunning faces looked out from a forest of hair. One of them said, ‘What’s up?’ and the other, ‘If you’re looking for it I’ve got it.’

Sally was not used to being accosted by the vulgar. She turned her back on them. Pamela said, ‘Sorry, boys, I’m waiting for a man.’

‘What’s he got that I haven’t?’ the first boy said. He put a hand on Pamela’s arm. ‘Come on, and I’ll show you.’

‘Just a minute.’ She produced the whistle from her bag. ‘Shall I blow it?’

The boys stared disgustedly. ‘You must be out of your mind,’ one of them said. They slouched off down the road.

‘It’s a quarter past. I’m going home. You come back too, Pam, and have supper.’

‘You don’t suppose one of them was really our Abel, do you?’

‘I don’t know and I don’t care. I hate this. Come back with me, there’s a spare bed.’

‘Just give it five minutes. Don’t you want to see what he looks like? What’s the betting he’s a hunchback, or can’t get out a sentence without stuttering? Would you fancy being done by a hunchback? I mean, it might be different.’

Most of the time Sally admired almost everything about Pamela – her sexual freedom, her outspokenness, the whole way she lived – but just occasionally she felt disgusted, as she did now. She began to walk away.

At the corner she turned. Pamela was standing beside the shop, lighting a cigarette. She waved and blew a kiss.

 

Five minutes later the car that had slowed when the boys were talking to them came round the corner, slowed again, and stopped. Pamela went to the window. ‘Mr Giluso?’

‘You’ll be Pamela.’ He leaned over, opened the front door. She got in. He drove away.

‘You’re not at all as I thought you’d be,’ she said.

He looked at her briefly. ‘Neither are you. At least, I don’t think so.’

‘I mean, no hunchback.’

‘Hunchback?’

‘Just a joke.’ She became aware that somebody was in the back of the car, turned. ‘It’s a little party, is it? Where are we going?’

‘Why did you bring somebody else with you?’

She turned back towards the driver, and so never saw the pad that was pressed firmly over her mouth and nostrils from behind.