“SO surprised I was to see you coming up the walk,” said Mrs. Wasserman, her short legs trying to keep pace with Jury’s long ones as they walked to the Angel. She occupied the basement flat in the house in Islington where Jury had also lived for years. “Did something happen? Where’s your car? It didn’t break down, I hope. You were going away on holiday, remember?”
Jury smiled. It was as if he’d misplaced his car, forgotten his holiday. “You know how it is, Mrs. Wasserman. Something interfered.”
They were nearing the Angel. Mrs. Wasserman hated the Angel. She did not like its graffitied posters or its imprisoning lift or the foreigners who worked there. Sometimes she would go all the way to the Highbury-Islington station and take a bus back just to avoid the Angel.
She handed Jury a pound note to buy her ticket and continued her account of her most recent glimpse of the man she claimed had been following her. “He was there when I was walking from the Highbury station and down Islington High Street. There’s a greengrocer’s there I like to go to, you know. He followed me. And you remember the park there. We walked past it once and you said those trees, the two on the corner, how they looked like dancers, the way their branches were twined together.” In her nervousness she was snapping her black purse open and shut. “He stood there, near those trees. He stood there all the while I was in the shop.” The purse pressed tight against her bosom, she swayed slightly.
While Jury waited in the short line in front of the kiosk, he took out his notebook. “Describe him again, will you?” It was a ritual they went through often.
“So many times have I described him, Mr. Jury.” This was said to a sad little headshake, a sad little smile. Jury was now cast in the role of neglectful nephew, whom she counted on, who had failed her, but who, perhaps, should be forgiven, he was so young and innocent and maybe even simple-minded. After all, he’d forgot his holiday and lost his car. “Well, he was small, and wearing a brown suit and coat. And a brown trilby. His eyes were not nice, not nice at all.”
Jury wrote it down. There probably was such a man; there were many such men. But he knew the man wasn’t following Mrs. Wasserman. Her obsession with her shadowy pursuer had grown over the years. Now for a few days she would avoid the greengrocer’s and the little park and the trees that looked like dancers, before forgetting that that was where she had seen him last.
The new aluminum lift clattered to a stop and a bored Pakistani waited for his cargo to exit through the door which opened into a narrow alley.
Mrs. Wasserman looked at her ticket. “I have to change at King’s Cross. I hate changing. Where are you going, Mr. Jury?”
“The East End. Wembley Knotts.”
“Not a very nice place. You had better be careful. But I suppose that’s silly, telling a policeman to be careful.” She stepped on the lift. “It’s just that, you know, the Underground’s so awful anymore. Awful things happen.”
“I know,” said Jury to the closing doors of the lift.
Darkness was coming on quickly in Catchcoach Street. The windows of the Anodyne Necklace cast turbid half-moons of yellow light on the pavement.
When Jury walked in, he saw the women were still doing sentry-duty on the benches; their men were still propping up the bar. Shirl, in a sleeveless purple velvet so antique the nap was nearly worn away, stopped plying her trade long enough to smile and wave. Several of the others nodded to Jury, including Harry Biggins. He had become, apparently, a fixture, just another regular at the corner boozer.
Wizards—apparently the same game they’d been playing for months—was proceeding at the back table. They had all heard, by now, of the grisly affair at the Wembley Knotts tube station. To give them credit, they tried to maintain a proper air of solemnity. Glee kept breaking through.
“Come a cropper, dihn’t ’e?” said Keith, with a wide smile. “Ruddy policeman, ’ow about that? Ruddy policeman. Always thought them country cops was so bloody ’onest.”
“Apparently not,” said Jury, matching the smile.
“They’d better be careful,” said Dr. Chamberlen. “They’ll be getting the same reputation as the Metropolitan police.” He came close to giggling.
“I just dropped in to thank you for cooperating with us.”
Their blank faces suggested they didn’t know quite how to take this.
“Have you seen Cyril Macenery and Ash Cripps?”
“ ’Aven’t set eyes on Cy all day. But there was a bleedin’ copper come by not fifteen minutes ago lookin’ for Ash. Guess ’e’s been at it again.” Laughter all round the table.
As Jury walked up the pavement towards number twenty-four, he saw a police constable leading Ash Cripps down the walk. From the way his hairy legs protruded from his buttoned-up overcoat, it would appear Ash was clad in nothing but the coat.
Standing in the doorway, hands on trousered hips, White Ellie delivered herself of an account of the proceedings, beginning as usual in medias res: “ . . . Terrible it was, an ’er runnin’ screamin’ outta the ladies like all the devils in ’ell was after ’er. An ’im, there, stark, poppin’ ’is ugly mug over the rail . . . ”
“Shut yer bleedin’ mouth, Elephant!”
As Jury said to the P.C., “What’s the trouble, Officer?” White Ellie still lacerated the air with a few well-chosen obscenities.
The constable looked at Jury, frowning, until Jury pulled out his warrant card. “Oh, sorry, sir!” Then he took Jury aside, saying sotto voce, “You see, sir, I found him in the Ladies over to the little park off Drumm Street. Exposin’ himself, he was. Name’s Ashley Cripps. Ash the Flash they call him round here.”
“It’s okay, Constable—?”
“Brenneman, sir.”
“I need Mr. Cripps here for questioning. I’ll take full responsibility if you’ll release him into my custody.”
Constable Brenneman looked as if there were nothing he’d like better, but he thought it only right to warn Jury: “Thing is, sir, it’s not the first time I’ve had to take him in.”
Jury also lowered his voice to say, “And I’m sure it won’t be the last.”
• • •
Constable Brenneman went whistling off down the walk and Ashley Cripps, trying to muster whatever dignity he could, squared his shoulders and preceded Jury into his parlor. “Gimme me strides, Elephant.”
Without ceremony, she did so, then and there. Then she said to Jury, “Well, come on back, then; we was just ’avin’ a fry-up. Missed our tea, we did, ’cause of’im, and the kiddies was starved.” The extent of the starvation was clear from the noise of cutlery, banging glasses and yelled demands for mash and rashers in the kitchen. As they passed through the parlor, Jury shoved some laundry back in the pram, away from the baby’s head. Its rosebud mouth yawned. Alive.
White Ellie allocated what was left of the cooked rashers among the children. Sookey immediately tried to nick the girl’s, but let go when she hit his ear with her fork. Friendly was slapping the catsup bottle and it came out in a rush.
“ ’Eard all about it, we did. ’Orrible, ’orrible.” White Ellie was peeling off some more rashers, dropping them into sizzling grease.
Having belted in his trousers and buttoned up a shirt, Ash said, “Fell right on the bleedin’ tracks, is what I ’eard. Well, there it is then. World’s full of perverts.” He shoved Sookey out of a chair. “Get outta ’ere, you kids. Give the Super ’ere a chair.”
The kids mauled out of the kitchen, Friendly taking his bowl with him, and giving Jury a fierce look.
“Will you ’ave a bit of supper, then?” she said to Jury.
“Thanks, but no. I’ve got to get back to the Yard.”
“Listen, thanks for what you did out there.” Ash nodded toward the front, toward the scene of his latest debacle.
“Don’t mention it. Actually, I came here to thank you. One good turn deserves another. Sorry I can’t stay.”
• • •
At the door they shook hands. “If you’re ever this way again, look us up,” said White Ellie.
Jury assured them he would, at the same time looking apprehensively at his car’s windscreen. Clean.
As he was getting into it, he heard Ash Cripps telling the kids to wave. Small hands shot up over catsupped faces.
White Ellie yelled, “Your ’and, Friendly! Your ’and!”