With infinite slowness the rain was fretting itself to a standstill, becoming first a drizzle and then a fine mist. An uncanny silence seemed to follow in its wake, a silence belonging to the streets and buildings. It was as though they were emerging from a prudent retirement into which, animal-like, they had been driven by the hours of downpour. Now they were stirring and reaffirming their identities.
‘She’s nothing to do with me — how many more times-!’
Couldn’t Gently afford that ironic little smile? Dutt was in the back keeping the panicky foreman company; his hand rested on the man’s arm by way of an official reminder for him to watch his manners. And Blacker, he was sitting on needles; there wasn’t any insolence about him now.
‘I just go out with her sometimes — nothing wrong with that, is there? How should I know what she gets up to!’
People were beginning to come out in raincoats and plastic macs. A gang of youths were risking their fancy jackets and wrinkled trousers.
‘She’s a bad lot for all I know, but what’s that got to do with me?’
In the cinemas they would be sitting in close-packed rows, adding the warm smell of damp clothes to the stale atmosphere of cigarette smoke.
‘Anyway, I’m not to blame!’
They were turning down by Hotblack Buildings.
‘What she does is her business — you can’t pinch me for it!’
The Wolseley purred to a halt opposite the last wretched house.
Gently knocked his double knock and after an interval the door opened to reveal Maisie Bushell’s aggressive features. She was wearing a purple dress with a short hemline and plunging neck, and her face was made up heavily with an abundance of eyeshadow.
‘You! I can’t see you now — I’m just off out!’
‘I regret, Miss Bushell-’
‘Take your big foot out of my door!’
‘Please examine this warrant… we are here to search your house.’
‘You get out of here, or I’ll scream my bleeding head off!’
She didn’t scream, she knew better, but nothing could quieten her virulent tongue. Gently, who had a wide experience of Metropolitan prostitutes, was surprised at the freshness and vigour of this sample of local talent…
‘And you — bringing these so-and-so’s into my house — me, what’s never had no bloody trouble, except once when I asked a plain-clothes slop for a light!’
In spite of his anxiety Blacker was forced to wince under the flail.
‘You’re no stinking man — you’re a so-and-so, do you hear me? I’ve had better men than you coming after me on their knees!’
‘I didn’t bring them here-’
‘Like hell, you rotten juicer!’
‘You listen, Maisie! I tell you-’
‘Shut your filthy gob before I mess in it!’
Gently glanced around the miserable room with its apology for furnishings. He hadn’t particularly noticed it before, but apart from one chair all the moveables were grouped on the same side. By the chair in question the furious owner had taken her stand.
‘Would you mind stepping aside, Miss Bushell?’
‘Yes, I bleeding would — so what are you going to do about it?’
‘I shall have to remove you forcibly, ma’am.’
‘Just you randy slops lay one finger on me-!’
It was Dutt who had to do it, at some personal risk and expenditure of energy. The voiced opinions of Miss Bushell would have coloured an air more susceptible. Raging and fighting, she was deposited on her settee; Dutt was obliged to stand by her while Gently prosecuted his search.
‘You rotten buggers… leave that chair alone!’
The chair removed, it was possible to roll back the dingy floorcloth from the better part of the floor.
‘If you touch my carpet I’ll have your bloody eyes out!’
Nevertheless, the floorcloth was duly removed from the naked boards.
There was no need to go all the way. The half-plank, freshly sawn across, stood out like a bent penny. It was in almost the same situation as the loose board in Blacker’s front room: the one had probably suggested the other.
‘You touch it and I’ll kill you!’
Unheeding, Gently prised up the plank and reached for the brown-paper packet which lay snugly underneath. He placed it on the chair and pulled the bow-knot which secured it; spilling out untidily came a number of made-up packages of what were indubitably five-pound notes…
‘That’s the so-and-so you want to talk to — me, I never knew nothing about it!’
Blacker’s thin lips were bitten tight together, and at a glance from him towards the door, Dutt had moved across to plant his burly form in front of it. Gently was still counting the packages of fivers. There were nineteen of them, and one broken open.
‘Asked me to keep it for him — do you think I bothered to look inside? As if a mess like him ever had any money!’
In each full packet there were a hundred notes, in the broken one only forty. Plain rubber bands had been substituted for the printed wrappers of the bank.
‘Asked you to keep it — when was that?’
‘Last Thursday night — and well you know it!’
‘About what time?’
‘Half past stinking midnight!’
‘And you didn’t enquire what the parcel contained, though keeping it involved sawing a plank out of your floor?’
She was a fighter to the last, the Mussolini-chinned Miss Bushell. Sitting bolt upright on the settee, she had the appearance of a boxer, game if outclassed; at the sound of the bell she would come out mixing it.
‘Would you like to describe what took place?’
‘Nothing took place — I told you everything last time!’
‘You told me that you made a round of the pubs and that Blacker kept you company. Are you telling me now that he found this parcel on a seat?’
Miss Bushell swore lustily and with a degree of talent.
‘So he left me after the pubs turned out — what’s the messing difference? He’d got some business to see to, that’s what he told me, and if he tries to tell you different then he’s a rotten liar!’
‘He told you the nature of the business?’
‘No, he something didn’t!’
‘But he left you at about half past ten?’
‘More like eleven, since it’s a slop who wants to know.’
‘What happened then?’
‘What happened? I went home! Do you think I hang about the streets after I’m fixed up for the night?’
‘And Blacker arrived here at half past twelve?’
‘That’s what I said, ain’t it? Him and that messing parcel! “I got something here worth a bit, Maisie,” he says. “You’d better hide it away for me, just in case they come looking for it.” And me being weak and good- hearted-’
‘Were you in the habit of hiding things for people?’
‘Me? Why, I never done a wrong thing in my life!’
‘But you made no objection — even though “they” might come looking for it?’
‘I’d been on the juice, I tell you — I never give it a thought!’
‘But the next day, when you were sober. Wouldn’t you have thought about it then?’
‘So help me God, I’d forgotten all about it. I mind my own business, not half a dozen other people’s.’
