scattered about the nearby tables. But there wasn’t any Jeff and Bonce, and there wasn’t any Frenchy… in fact, Gently noticed, there weren’t any women in the bar at all, not of any kind.
He went across to the counter and settled himself on a stool, one from the sporty type.
Artie and the latter exchanged a leer, but there was no comment made.
‘The usual?’ inquired Artie, with a slight sneer in his voice.
Gently quizzed his ferrety features. ‘You wouldn’t have any milk, by any chance?’
‘Milk!’ Artie almost snorted the word. ‘There’s a milk-bar just down the road!’
‘I’m serious… I want some milk.’
Artie eyed him balefully for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and snatched a glass from under the counter. ‘Boss’s orders,’ he sneered, ‘got to treat policemen like gentlemen.’ He ducked under the counter and disappeared through the adjacent door.
The sporty type tipped up the remains of his whisky. ‘If you’re looking for your girly, you won’t find her here, guv,’ he observed spiritously. ‘Louey’s had a purge — no women, no kids, and nothing out of line from no one… getting quite pally towards the coppers is Big Louey.’
Gently lifted his eyebrows. ‘It’s not a bad thing to be in most lines of business… what’s yours?’
‘What’s mine?’ The sporty type affected jocularity. ‘Ho-ho! I’ll keep on drinking what I’m drinking, and thank you very much!’
‘I mean your business,’ said Gently evenly.
‘Oh, me business… I was going to say it was the first time a copper ever asked me… well, there you are! I’m what you might call a Turf Consultant.’
‘You mean a tipster?’
‘Now guv, when we’re trying to add dignity to the profession…’
‘And you make a living at it?’
‘A bit of that and a bit of working with Louey. You don’t run a bookie’s business on your own.’
‘Well, you seem to do all right at it.’
The sporty type squirmed a little, but was relieved of the necessity of making a reply by the return of Artie with the glass of milk. He slammed it down perilously in front of Gently.
‘It’s on the house… with Louey’s compliments.’
Gently nodded and drank it slowly. He really needed that milk. Its soothing coolness flooded into his digestive chaos like a summons to order, nature’s answer to a canteen sausage. He drained the last drop and regarded the filmy glass with a dreamy eye. There were just a few things in life…
‘Louey got company?’ he asked Artie.
‘Nobody who’s worried by policemen.’
‘Tut, tut, Artie! I’m sure Louey wouldn’t approve of that attitude
… I was just wondering if he could spare me a few minutes.’
‘Why ask?’ retorted Artie, ‘just walk right in like every other cop.’
Gently shook his head. ‘You’ve got the wrong impression, Artie… you must have been rude to a policeman when you were a little boy.’ He slid off the stool and went over to the door. Then he paused, hand on the knob. ‘I suppose you didn’t have sausages for tea, Artie?’
Louey’s office was a comfortable room which exhibited a good deal of taste and some quiet expense. The walls were papered in two colours, maroon and grey, the floor was completely carpeted in grey to match and the pebble-grained glass windows, being on grey walls, had maroon curtains relieved by hand-blocked designs in dark blue. The furniture was in keeping. It was of discreet contemporary design showing Scandinavian influence. On the walls hung two coloured prints of race-horses after Toulouse-Lautrec, and under one of the windows stood a jardiniere of cream wrought-iron containing a pleasant assortment of indoor plants. There was a short passage separating the office from the bar: it had the effect of reducing the canned crooners in the arcade to a distant, refined murmur.
Louey sat sprawled in a chair by his desk when Gently entered. He was nursing a cat on his knees, a black- and-white tom with a blue ribbon round its neck and a purr like an unoccupied buzzsaw. On another chair was seated the parrot-faced man, still garbed in his dubious evening-dress and still armed with his yard of gold-plated cigarette-holder. Louey greeted Gently with a smile from which his gold tooth shone.
‘Pleased to see you, Inspector. I was wondering if you would honour us tonight.’
‘Indeed? Then I won’t be interrupting any business.’
Louey laughed his comfortable laugh and chivvied the tom with a huge hand. ‘No business tonight… it’s been a bad day for the punters. Not a favourite came home at Wolverhampton. A bad day, eh, Peachey?’
The parrot-faced man mumbled a nervous affirmative. He seemed equally apprehensive of both Gently and Louey. His small pale eyes wandered from one to the other, and he sat in his chair as though it were a penance to him.
‘Peachey’s my clerk,’ explained Louey, seeming to linger on the words, ‘he’s a good boy… very useful… aren’t you, Peachey? Very useful! But sit down, Inspector, make yourself at home… as a matter of fact, we’ve just been talking about you.’
‘Really?’
Louey smiled auriferously. ‘The evening papers… probably exaggerated… still, we feel you deserve congratulations. The inspector has got a long way in twenty-four hours, hasn’t he, Peachey — eh?’
Gently selected a chair upholstered in blue candy-stripe and swung it round, back to front. Then he seated himself heavily. Louey continued to smile.
‘Will you have a drink…? Some more milk, if you prefer it?’
‘No, thank you. I’ll just smoke.’
Louey swept up a silver box from the desk and inclined his gigantic frame towards Gently.
‘Try one of these… Russian. It’s a taste I’ve acquired.’
‘Thanks, but I smoke a pipe.’
‘You watch your health, Inspector.’
Such a polite and obliging Louey, thought Gently, as he stuffed his pipe-bowl. Who would have expected such polish from the Goliath who had bawled out the bar last night? There seemed to be two of him… one for out there and one for in here, a Jekyll and Hyde Louey. He glanced around the room. Certainly it wasn’t furnished by a moron…
‘You like my office?’ Louey leaned forward again with a lighter.
‘It’s not the usual sort of bookmaker’s office.’
The gold tooth appeared. ‘Perhaps I’m not the usual sort of bookmaker… eh? But most of my business is done in the outer office. I keep this one for myself and my friends.’
His eyes met Gently’s, frank, steady, even the sinister effect of the fleck in the pupil seeming softened and modified. We are equals, they were trying to say, you are a man like myself: I recognize you. When we talk together there is no need for subterfuge…
‘So you don’t know that prostitute, Frenchy?’ demanded Gently roughly — so roughly, in fact, that Peachey dropped his cigarette brandisher. But the grey eyes remained fixed unwaveringly upon his own.
‘I’m afraid not, Inspector… apart from warning her to leave the bar once or twice.’
‘Does he know her?’ Gently motioned towards Peachey with his head. Louey turned slowly towards his trembling clerk.
‘Go on… tell the inspector.’
‘I’ve s-spoken to her once or twice…!’ Peachey had a whining, high-pitched voice, oddly reminiscent of Nits.
‘Nothing else but that?’
‘N-no… honest I haven’t! Just in the bar… a joke…’
‘You’ve never seen her with this fellow?’ Gently whipped out one of the doctored photographs and shoved it under Peachey’s nose. The unhappy clerk shot back a foot in his chair.
‘Tell him,’ rumbled Louey, ‘don’t waste the inspector’s time.’
‘No… n-never… I never seen him at all!’
‘Then you know who he is?’ snapped Gently.
