He closed his notes with a brisk slap, and yawned exhaustingly. “We’ve got a choice. Is this a case about a door, and only incidentally about a man? Or is it a case about a man—this chap Bracewell—and only incidentally about a door? You tell me!”
“I wish I could say the door didn’t matter,” the sergeant owned mournfully, “I wish I could believe somebody simply copped his enemy here by chance, and left us holding a corpse that isn’t ours by right. But something tells me the door genuinely matters. Why should he come back, else? George, I don’t like it, I don’t like it at all.”
“Neither do I,” said George grimly. “And you know who’s going to like it least of all, unless I doctor my report? The Chief Constable. You know him, he takes fright at the drop of a hat, if he thinks we’re in real trouble he’ll yell for the Yard tomorrow morning. And it’s got to be tomorrow morning or never. They’ll curse us to hell if we fetch them in when everything’s congealed like cold mutton fat.”
“George,” Sergeant Moon leaned over the table and spoke with intense gravity, “don’t let him do it. These are our people, and this is our case, and if the southerners get in on it the whole valley will go to ground. It’ll be border warfare all over again, I’m telling you.
“The door, then, not the man?” said George.
“The door! And I’m staking my reputation!”
CHAPTER 4
« ^ »
ROBERTA Bracewell, Bobbie to her friends, opened the front door of her first-floor flat at No. 10 Clement Gardens, at the improbable hour of a quarter to eight on the Friday morning, and stared suspiciously at Dave Cressett across the threshold. Her fair hair was still in rollers, half-concealed beneath a chiffon scarf, and she had not yet put on her office face, but from the neck down she was immaculate in a grey worsted dress, sheer stockings and thick-heeled patent shoes.
“Mrs. Bracewell?”
“Oh!” she said blankly, seeing a stranger on the doorstep, and her eyes narrowed into hostility. “I thought it was the post. What a time to come calling, I must say.” She inched the door a little nearer closing in his face. “You’re not the press again, are you?”
“No, nothing like that. I tried to telephone you last night, but you weren’t answering, and they told me you went out to work, so I thought I’d better get it here before office hours. But maybe you aren’t going in to work—if not, I’m sorry I disturbed you so early.”
“I’m going in,” she said grimly. “I have to live. Nobody’s going to pay me big money for the story of my life with Gerry, that I know of—a couple of paras and a picture will be all, if they give me that much. And he didn’t leave me much but hire-purchase agreements.”
“He left you a car,” said Dave simply. “I’ve just driven it in from my place, where he brought it for repairs. It’s down in the street now, if you’ll tell me where you want it I’ll bring it in for you.” There were two wooden garages beside the broad drive of the converted Victorian house, but he had no way of knowing which was Bracewell’s. “The police have cleared it, everything’s in order.”
“The car!” she said, astonished. “Will you believe me, I never even thought about his car!” She looked again, and more intently, at Dave. Her face was regular and well-cut, but pale with the dingy city pallor, and her eyes were illusionless. “You’re from there?” she said. “The place where it happened?”
“Yes, that’s right. He had a bit of trouble with his steering, and left the car with me that day. I had it ready for him by evening, but he didn’t come for it. The police had to go over it, afterwards, but they’ve finished with it now, it’s all yours.”
“Well, well!” she said with the ghost of a laugh. “Something salvaged! Pity it had to be just a car, but even a car helps. I must owe you some money, then.” She set the door wide on a narrow white hall. “You’d better come in. I’ve got time enough, and I daresay you could do with a cup of coffee, starting out as early as all that.”
Dave stayed where he was. “I haven’t put in a bill. It wasn’t you who commissioned the job. That’s all right.”
Her eyes widened a little. She gave him a long, considering look, and then she smiled. “Come in, anyhow, and have the coffee. You’re not the press—and God knows I can’t be sure whether I want that lot to come in droves or stay away from me altogether—and you’re not the police—not that I can complain, they’ve been all right—what could they do about it? Still, somebody to talk to who isn’t either…”
So he went in. What else could he do? She closed the outer door behind them, and clumped along on her chunky heels to the small, primrose-coloured kitchen, all nylon net and blue and white earthenware on a plastic lace tablecloth. The flat was small, hesitant in style, confused in taste, as if she had composed it in hurried five-minute frenzies between the office and whatever her social life consisted of, and forgotten it all the rest of the time. Quite a bit of money had gone into it, but not much effort or thought, and it must surely have been coming to pieces in sheer discouragement long before Gerry Bracewell got himself murdered in some obscure cause in a far-distant village. Yet there were signs that this woman could have been a house-proud wife and mother if she had ever given herself the chance.
She swept her discarded apron from one of the two yellow plastic-upholstered chairs at the kitchen table to make a place for him, and poured him coffee, and then refilled her own cup and sat down opposite him at the table, spreading her arms on the cloth.
Abruptly but quietly she asked: “Did you see him?”
Dave did not even pretend to misunderstand her. “I found him.”
“I see!” She lowered her eyes. “Poor old Gerry,” she said after a moment, with resigned composure. “He was a bastard to me, but he didn’t deserve that. Maybe he wasn’t any more of a bastard to me than I was to him, when it comes down to it. How do I know? It just went sour, what does it matter now whose fault it was? I tell you, though, if we had it to do again we wouldn’t set about it the same way, I’d see to that. Not that there’s ever likely to be a second chance. I don’t even want any family now. Leave it, we said, we won’t get caught like some of the kids do, not even a year having fun and in come the brats and the bills, and most likely the debt-collectors, too. Not for us, thanks! We’ll both keep working, we said, get some capital, get
“I’m sorry!” said Dave helplessly, both cold hands cupped round his mug of coffee, which if instant was at least hot. He didn’t know what else to say.
