‘Unless the estate agent’s got a girlfriend…’
CHAPTER THREE
It may have been that chance remark which led him first to visit Johnson’s office, thus ignoring some obvious preliminaries which, quite frankly, ought to have been seen to. These included a visit to the dustbins, a step which Stephens regarded as de rigueur: Gently, with a better appreciation of Hansom, expected small profit from this piece of routine.
He had, moreover, used the car park in the past, and so was familiar with the general layout. More important for him, in the initial stages, were the things with which his mind’s eye was unable to help him.
‘I think I’ll take a look at the husband! Perhaps you’d like to go back to HQ?’
‘Whatever you say, sir. But shouldn’t we, to start with-?’
‘I’ll leave that to you, then we won’t be duplicating our efforts.’
Stephens, as he had intended, was mildly complimented by this, but a little to Gently’s surprise the young man preferred to tag along with his senior.
‘The husband, after all, is the number one suspect…’
It went without saying that Stephens was a graduate from Ryton. He was a product of the new policy for catching promising material young. He had been groomed into inspectorhood at an age when Gently had been proud to be a sergeant, and as with others of the new school, textbook lore came readily to his tongue.
Johnson’s office was in Upper Queen Street, in the business area of the city. It was housed in a Victorian building which owned a dignified, sugar-ice front. The street was a traffic artery to the north and was busy with steady streams of vehicles; it adjoined the cathedral precincts at one end and was closed by the GPO at the other. The office had a prosperous appearance and it rejoiced in some brilliant paintwork. To air-force blue had been added crimson linings, with a touch of gilt on the scroll above the portal. On the plate-glass of the window appeared Johnson’s name in discreet small capitals; the window was backed by a pegboard, to which details of the properties were attached.
‘He seems to get the county people…’ Gently brooded over the photographs and particulars. Very few of the advertised properties were at addresses in the city. A score or more of the neatly typed cards referred to substantial country houses, and there were mentions of shooting rights and ‘half a mile of the best coarse fishing’. It was the sort of estate-agent’s window before which Gently had often stood and dreamed.
The clerk’s office behind the window developed this note of established prosperity. It was furnished in contemporary style and contained electric typewriters and the most modern equipment. Two of the typists were middle-aged women and they paid no attention to the intruders; but the third, a rather sharp-faced brunette, rose to greet them with a flashing smile.
‘Is Mr Johnson busy at present?’
‘Did you want to see him especially, sir?’
The smile went into a decline when Gently introduced himself, and the two typers, looking up quickly, showed that they could listen as they worked.
A handsomely carpeted flight of stairs took them up to the first floor. The receptionist flounced ahead of them, her spiked heels trotting briskly. By the time they had reached the landing Johnson had emerged from his room to meet them; another girl, carrying a shorthand notebook, slipped out of the room and went down the stairs.
‘I saw they’d called you in, old sport!’ Johnson was insisting on shaking their hands. ‘They plastered it over the local, you know, and me, with a gendarme’s hand on my shoulder…’
He was so much to type that it was difficult to believe in him — you felt he must be clowning it, laying it on a bit. But there wasn’t much that was funny in the tone of his voice, and after the first defiant stare, his eyes switched about him nervously.
‘Come into the ops room…’
He turned and preceded them into his office, which in its smartness was of a piece with the rest of the premises. With an attempt at an air he swaggered across to his desk, and before sprawling into the revolving chair, spun it once with his fingertip.
‘I always do that — it’s a gimmick I’ve got.’
‘Something you picked up in the Service?’
Johnson nodded his head briskly. ‘I used to do it in the mess before we took off on a prang… then one day I forgot, and copped a packet over Cologne. Bloody Lanc went up in smoke. Mine was the only chute that opened. Funny thing, wasn’t it, cocker? All the way down I was laughing my head off…’
His grey eyes fastened for an instant on Gently’s, as though watchfully seeking the Yard man’s reaction. It produced an unpleasant impression, a feeling of distrust. What had Hansom said about Johnson? ‘I could smell him for our man…’
Hansom had also said that Johnson resembled Heath, but perhaps he was judging from the press photograph of the murderer. Certainly they both had fair wavy hair, and eyes of pale grey that stared a little. But Johnson’s features were heavier and broader, he lacked the cleft chin and the length of the nose. His mouth, too, was stronger, a mouth full of determination. It looked as though it knew how to keep itself shut.
‘You’ve come here to put me through it again? It’s like the old days with the Gestapo, cocker. Don’t apologize or anything — I’m well up in the drill. I’ve been through worse grillings than you’ll ever dish out.’
‘This is just a routine recap, Mr Johnson.’
‘Good show! I love going through it ten times.’
‘I’m hoping that so much repetition won’t be necessary.’
Gently pulled up one of the office’s plastic-seated iron chairs. At a respectful distance, Stephens also took a seat. Johnson had shaken a cigarette from a torn-open packet, and having struck a match on his nail, was puffing smoke out noisily.
‘You knew that your wife was a member of the Palette Group, Mr Johnson?’
‘That’s a silly question, cocker. I couldn’t very well not know it.’
‘How long had she been a member?’
‘Two years or thereabouts. But she’d always mucked about with paints, even before we got hitched up.’
‘So for two years she had attended their meetings?’
‘Roger. And I knew about it all the time.’
‘You knew that they met on the first Monday of each month?’
‘And that the meetings lasted from half-seven to half-ten.’
‘I just wanted to get that clear, Mr Johnson. In your statement you merely said that you didn’t ask her where she was going.’
‘Whizzo. I thought you were leading up to something!’
‘Naturally, I wanted to establish that you knew where and when to find her.’
The smoke hissed through Johnson’s teeth but he made no comment. He was tilting his chair backwards and had got his chin buried in his pullover. Though Gently had purposely sat to his side, the estate agent was facing ahead so that he avoided the light from the window.
‘You’ve got a useful set of reference books in your office, Mr Johnson…’
Again there was no comment except the fierce expulsion of some smoke. He had a peculiar way of doing it, it was like the growling of a dog; the smoke emerged in an upward fan between the two horns of his massive moustache.
‘The current Kelly’s… is that a Blomefield?… and surely a run of Ladbrooke’s Churches. And an estate agent like yourself should have a fairish selection of maps…’
Johnson slid open a drawer of his desk and pulled out a mint-looking Ordnance Survey map. He weighed it for a second in his hand, and then adroitly copped it to Gently.
‘You can drop all the crafty stuff straight away, cocker. I tell you, I’m used to interrogation by experts. I’ve had three thousand and ten official lectures on security — plus the pleasure of being put through the mill by the Nazis.’
Gently shrugged, examining the map that Johnson had tossed him. It was indeed new, but bore a typed label on its cover:
‘Route taken by Derek Johnson on Monday, 5 July, with approximate times and number of pints imbibed.’