They charged four thousand eight hundred and fifty for the bungalows in Chase Drive and they looked worth about half of that, which is known in some circles as modern architecture. The Lister bungalow was the last in the road, the road being a two-hundred yard cul-de-sac. There were similar bungalows on each side of the road and this one at the bottom, backing straight on the Chase. The Chase at this spot had thirty-year pines with a screen of birches in front of them. The leaves of the birches had turned pale yellow. They trembled. They caught the last of the afternoon sun. The bungalow in front of them was composed of units with flat, shed-like roofs, and was built of glass and varnished wood and painted wood and a little brick. It had a semicircular concrete driveway and the driveway had no gates. In the arc of the driveway was a goldfish pool and a rockery and a small grass plot. There was a sign staked in the grass plot, a varnished section of a tree trunk. It said Treeways. To the right of the driveway was a tradesman’s entrance with an iron gate.
‘She’s all right. Got money,’ Setters was saying as they parked. ‘Lister was one of the architects here. Coronary occlusion, about a year ago. But he left her well-off, it’s all tied up in these houses. She’s got a couple of younger kids. Good-looking. Probably marry again.’
‘Living alone?’ Gently asked.
‘Till last week,’ Setters replied. ‘She’s got her mother here now to tide her over for a bit.’
They left the car on the road and walked up the driveway. The main door was plain wood painted white and had an iron bell-pull. It rang some chimes. An elderly woman came. She looked sharply at Gently. Setters addressed her as Mrs Clarkson and did his introduction again.
‘Jennifer’s dressing,’ said Mrs Clarkson. ‘You’d better come in, and I’ll tell her. But I hope you’re not going to be here for long. I’m fetching the children from school shortly.’
‘Not for long,’ Gently said. ‘We could come back tomorrow.’
‘It isn’t that, but she really isn’t fit to talk to people,’ said Mrs Clarkson.
She ushered them in through a square hall with a polished parquet floor and into a three-sided, slant-ceilinged room of which the fourth side was a glassed-in veranda. She left them. Setters sat down. Gently moved about the room. The slant-ceiling gave it spaciousness. The furniture was unpolished in a grey-toned wood. The upholstery of the furniture was in off-white and lemon and the carpet was off-white with flecks of black. The walls were papered in a trellis design. There was a piano. There was a record player.
‘What makes a kid from a home like this run riot?’ Setters inquired. ‘I wish I’d been a kid here. I wish I owned a place like it.’
‘When did Lister leave school?’ Gently asked.
‘That’s a point,’ Setters said. ‘It’d be a year ago, wouldn’t it, about the time his old man went. Since when he’s been working as a plumber’s mate for the firm his father was connected with. Starting at the bottom, more than likely. Not a question of money here.’
‘Did Elton work for that firm?’ Gently asked.
‘Yes,’ Setters said. ‘Hailey and Lincon’s. They’re a local firm here in Latchford. They brought in Lister for the overspill project.’
The door from the hall opened. Mrs Lister came in. She was a woman above middle height with a slender waist and wide hips. She had straight-cut gold-brown hair and green eyes and wide cheekbones and under the eyes were blued patches, and the cheeks were pale and a little sagged. She wore a charcoal dress with a bushed skirt. It had a belt. She wore a thin gold chain. She came forward.
‘You wanted to see me again?’ she asked. She held her hand out to Gently.
‘Just a recapitulation,’ Gently said. ‘I’m fresh here, and it always helps.’
‘I want to help you,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘I keep thinking I haven’t helped enough. If Les had been here…’ She stopped. ‘I want to help you all I can,’ she said.
She sat down on a wing armchair, crossing her calves and swinging them slantwise. She laid her hands in her lap. She made a small, hesitant smile for them.
‘I keep hoping it was an accident after all,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to know any more than that. It’s bad enough that Johnny is dead. I don’t think I could bear it if it’s something else.’
Gently nodded. ‘Life can be unkind.’
‘Yes.’ She smiled again. ‘Yes.’
‘And the worst of it is we have to find him,’ he said.
‘I understand that,’ she said. ‘I’m simply selfish.’
‘How did it start?’ he asked. ‘All this business. The motorcycling, the slang.’
‘I honestly don’t know,’ Mrs Lister said. ‘And yet I do. It happened after Les went.’
‘You think that was the cause of it?’ Gently asked.
‘I feel it had something to do with it,’ she said, ‘You see, up till that time Johnny was enthusiastic about his career. But Les going upset him terribly. I think there must have been a connection.’
‘What was his career to have been?’ Gently asked.
‘Building and contracting,’ she said. ‘Les wanted him to be an architect, but Johnny didn’t have the same talent for it. It was the practical side that Johnny was good at. Not just using his hands, but organization. So Les said all right, he’d better not waste time at college, and Johnny went straight into Hailey and Lincon’s. Which is what he wanted to do.’
‘Was he happy there?’ Gently asked.
‘I thought he was,’ Mrs Lister said. ‘He used to be talking about it always. And he went to evening classes in Castlebridge.’
‘Is that how he came to have a motorcycle?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That was mostly the reason. He had a scooter on his sixteenth birthday, but Castlebridge is twenty-five miles from here.’
‘And then what happened?’ Gently asked.
‘Well, he seemed to lose interest,’ Mrs Lister said. ‘He dropped the classes. He dropped a lot of his old friends. He became moody and secretive, bored when he was at home. I thought perhaps there was a girl in it. I tried to get him to confide in me. Then there was this awful slang and the passion for jazz records, and the silly clothes he used to wear. I kept hoping it was simply a phase. He wouldn’t talk to me about it.’
‘He made other friends, didn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘though not the sort I approved of. He brought them home once or twice, but he soon stopped doing that. I’m to blame I suppose. I ought to have concealed what I thought of them. But I couldn’t help it. They were terrible. I don’t think some of them ever washed. And there they sat, in his room, playing jazz records and smoking. Till the small hours, sometimes. I had to say something.’
‘Do you remember who they were?’ Gently asked.
‘I’m not sure I knew their names,’ she said. ‘But I remember the Elton boy coming. And Elton’s sister. And Dicky Deeming.’
‘Jack Salmon. Frankie Knights.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t remember. Only Dicky. I thought that Dicky was old enough to have known better. But he’s a writer, of course, so he might have been slumming after material.’ She made a face. ‘If you can call this bungalow a slum,’ she added.
‘How old is Deeming then?’
‘Oh, thirty-ish,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘He looks younger because he’s boyish, short hair and that. He writes for the little reviews, I’m told, and does book notices and things. He’s our only local author. That’s why I remember him.’
‘And Johnny was specially friendly with him?’
‘Oh, quite infatuated,’ she said. ‘For a time, you know. A spell of teenage hero-worship. Dicky was what Johnny wanted to be. Cool, I think is the term they use. A rebel against all convention, a jazz expert and etcetera. For a time he was always around with Dicky. Then Dicky faded out again.’
‘Was there any reason for that?’ Gently asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘It was around that time, or soon after, that he fell so heavily for Betty Turner. Poor girl. She little knew how it would end, her romance with Johnny. But I think she may have displaced Dicky. I remember thinking so at the time.’
‘He was genuinely in love with her, was he?’
Mrs Lister nodded several times. ‘He was like his father. Fell with a bang. Very like his father, was Johnny.’
‘Did you approve of Betty Turner?’
‘I didn’t disapprove,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t have picked her, she’s a sad little trollop. But I thought she was a healthier influence than Dicky. If she’d loved Johnny too.’
‘She didn’t love him?’ Gently said.
‘No,’ said Mrs Lister, ‘she didn’t. It was just a crush on her side.’
Setters shifted in his chair. ‘They were engaged, weren’t they?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They were engaged. But it wasn’t serious with Betty. If you want my frank opinion they wouldn’t have lasted for much longer. She was very pettish just lately. Johnny was much concerned, poor child.’
‘Was Elton the trouble?’ Gently asked.
‘He may have been,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘I know she used to be fond of Elton and sometimes she teased Johnny about him. I’m not sure. She was pettish and listless. She’d just grown tired of Johnny, I think.’
Gently sat silent for some moments. Mrs Lister was biting her lip. The wing of the armchair shaded her face, her eyes were hooded but staring fixedly. Now the sun had gone in. The light in the room was greyer.
‘I’ve seen your statement,’ Gently said, ‘about what happened last Tuesday. But I’d like you to go through it again, just in case there’s anything you forgot.’
She shuddered. ‘I’ve told you everything,’ she said.
‘I’d be grateful,’ he said, ‘if you’d face it.’
She nodded weakly. ‘I know I must. You’re very kind. I’ll try.’
‘First,’ he said, ‘did it differ in any way from your usual Tuesday programme?’
She thought a little. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I can’t remember anything different.’
‘You got your youngsters up, did you, got the breakfast and so forth?’
‘Mrs Jillings got the breakfast,’ she said. ‘Mrs Jillings is my daily.’
‘Then did you all have breakfast together?’
She shook her head. ‘Johnny had his first. He had to be at the site at eight. He was working on the Ford Road project.’
‘Did Johnny seem much as usual?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘What I saw of him. Except perhaps he was a little short with me. But I’d been used to that, lately. He rang Betty.’
‘What about?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t listen,’ she said. ‘I thought he was arranging about the evening, you know, the jazz thing in Castlebridge. He used to go there every Tuesday.’
‘Did he usually ring her about it?’
‘I don’t remember,’ she said. ‘He used to ring Betty a lot.’
‘So then you saw him off, did you?’
‘I saw him get his bike out,’ she said. ‘I was dressing Jean in the kiddies’ bedroom. I gave him a wave but he didn’t see me. Then, well, it was much as always. I drove the kiddies to school. Mrs Jillings did the ironing while I prepared the things for lunch. Then I drove down to town, did some shopping, went to Leonard’s for coffee. It can’t be of importance. Only to me, that is.’
‘Johnny came home to lunch, did he?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘at about twenty to one.’
‘Was that his usual time for lunch?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘They leave off at twelve-thirty.’
‘Was there anything you noticed at lunch?’
‘He was quiet,’ she said. ‘He had nothing to say. And usually he read the lunchtime paper. I thought he was brooding about Betty. I tried to talk to him about it. I could have helped him, I know. I’d give anything now.’ She stopped. ‘He snapped at me,’ she said.
‘What made you think he was brooding over Betty?’
She paused. ‘Woman’s intuition,’ she said. ‘But no, that’s not quite true, really. I’d seen him worrying over her before. I watched him the more because he’d gone so far from me. I sometimes knew what he was thinking. Poor Johnny. Poor Johnny. But all the time I was with him really.’
‘So you’d begun to lose him,’ Gently said, ‘when you lost your husband.’
She nodded silently. Her hand lifted and fell again in her lap.
‘It’s been all one tragedy.’
‘All one,’ she said.
‘These kids,’ Setters said. He wrung his hands, making the joints crack.
‘Was there anything else about lunch?’ Gently asked.
She was on the point of shaking her head. She changed her mind. ‘One thing,’ she said, ‘since you want to know every detail. He went to his room when he came in. Before he washed or did anything. I thought perhaps he’d gone to fetch something, but he was carrying nothing when he came out.’
‘Did he take something in there?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘he’d nothing with him. Or it was something very small which he carried in his pocket.’
‘Have you noticed anything in his room?’
‘No, nothing,’ she said.
‘You’ve been in there since Tuesday?’
‘Once,’ she said, ‘I went in.’
‘Let’s go on from after lunch.’
She leant her head on the wing of the chair. ‘It was one of those blank afternoons,’ she said. ‘Nothing happened much at all. After the washing-up I did some mending, Peter’s socks, Jean’s gym-slip. Then I looked at the TV, but there was nothing on that. So I pottered about in the house till it was time to fetch the kiddies. They’d had their tea and were out playing by the time Johnny got back. He was angrier if anything.’
‘Had he been angry before?’
‘With me,’ she said. ‘He’d been angry all day. And now he was angrier. We couldn’t exchange a civil word. I was bushed, I felt desperate, I couldn’t think what I was going to do about him. I’ve been miserable. It needed a man. Johnny needed a man to cope with him.’
‘Can you remember anything significant he said?’
‘It was just angriness,’ she said. ‘Picking on things, you know, making a tragedy out of nothing. The tea wasn’t ready when he wanted it, he couldn’t find a clean shirt, Mrs Jillings hadn’t pressed his tie, I got in his way in the bathroom. By the time it was over and he’d gone I was practically in tears. I put the kiddies to bed early. Jean came in for a smacking.’
‘And you put it down to his anxiety about Betty.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I suppose I did. Betty and everything she stood for.’
‘Not just Betty.’
‘Betty and the rest. It’s all one in my mind,’ she said. ‘If she’d been a decent sort of girl she wouldn’t have led him on so far.’
‘Just briefly,’ Gently said, ‘did anything happen during the evening?’
‘I played bridge,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘The Dawsons came over. I played bridge.’
In the report it said she’d been rung at a quarter to one on the Wednesday morning. Later that day she’d seen the body and identified the motorcycle and some clothes. Her doctor, Setters had said, had given her a strong sedative, but after the initial shock she had declined to use it.
A car pulled in to the driveway.
‘That’s Mother with the kiddies,’ Mrs Lister said.
‘One more question,’ Gently said, ‘then we’ll stop being a nuisance to you. What sort of cigarettes did your son smoke?’
Mrs Lister looked puzzled. ‘Guards, I think.’
‘Did he ever talk of sticks?’ Gently asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘What are sticks?’
‘Reefers,’ Gently said.
Still Mrs Lister looked puzzled.
‘Cigarettes,’ he explained, ‘with a percentage of marijuana added.’
‘Oh,’ she said. She flushed slightly. ‘That’s dope, isn’t it?’ she said.
Gently nodded. ‘That’s dope.’
‘No,’ she said quickly, ‘he wouldn’t. No.’
‘He never mentioned them at all?’
‘Never,’ she said. ‘Not Johnny.’
‘You didn’t suspect he might be smoking them? They have a strong, heady aroma.’
She hesitated. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Johnny just wouldn’t have done it.’
Gently rose. ‘Would it very much upset you if we looked through his room?’ he said.
Her flush was heightened. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘You can do that if you want to.’
She rose and led the way out into the hall and down a short passage. They passed a door behind which could be heard the voices of children in expostulation. She checked there but then continued. She opened a door at the end of the passage. It gave into a small bedroom with an enormous window that faced the trees.
‘Johnny’s room,’ she said, catching her breath. She went to the window and stood looking out.
Gently entered. He sniffed delicately. Stale cigarette smoke and newish furnishings. A bedroom suite in unpolished oak, a bedside cabinet, a table. On the table was a record player and a plastic rack stuffed with records. In the top of the cabinet there were books. There was a yellow Penguin on the Buddhist Scriptures. A glass ashtray stood on the cabinet, recently emptied but not washed. A working jacket hung over a chair. Some boots were shoved underneath.
Gently opened the door of the cabinet. It contained magazines, a camera, junk. The dressing-table drawers were crammed with clothes and in the tallboy was clean bedlinen. Setters went over the wardrobe. He had exploring fingers like a pickpocket’s. Soon he closed the door noiselessly and gave a small, negative shrug. Shoes, boots were all empty. Nothing was hidden about the bed.
‘About how long was Johnny in here at lunchtime on Tuesday?’ Gently asked.
‘Only a moment,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘He went straight in and came straight out again.’
Gently went to the doorway, stood looking round the room. He walked across to the record player, snapped the catches, lifted the lid. A record lay on the turntable. He lifted the record. Underneath, wrapped in a serviette, were five unbranded cigarettes. They were clumsily rolled in a greyish paper and made from a coarse brown tobacco. He showed them to Setters.
‘Like the others you’ve seen round here?’ he asked.
Setters nodded. He turned one of them over with his nail.
Mrs Lister came forward, stared at the five cigarettes. She was very pale.
‘And they’re reefers?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Gently said. ‘They’re reefers.’
‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘Oh God, not Johnny. It’s beyond me, I can’t believe it. There’s no meaning any longer.’ She began to laugh hysterically, the tears plunging down her cheeks.
‘I’m sorry,’ Gently said.
‘There’s no meaning,’ she repeated.
‘We’ll have to take these,’ Gently said. ‘We’ll perhaps find out who’s been pushing them.’
‘There’s no meaning,’ she went on. ‘And I’m so tired of it, so tired of it. There’s no point in it all. And I’m so tired, so tired.’
Some feet scuffled in the passage. A little boy stood in the doorway. He was six or seven, fair-haired, wearing a school blazer with a huge badge. His eyes were round. His mouth was working. His chubby hands were balled hard. He suddenly ran screaming to Mrs Lister.
‘Mummy. Mummy. Mummy. Mummy.’
He buried his face in her stomach. She held him to her with both hands.
‘Peter,’ she said. ‘Peter.’
‘Mummy, mummy,’ he wailed.
‘Peter.’
He twisted round. He stared at Gently. There was a flinching pucker in his face.
‘Go away policeman,’ he said. ‘Go away from my mummy.’
‘No, Peter,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘He’s a kind man, Peter.’
‘Go away,’ Peter said. ‘Policeman go away.’
Gently made a sign to Setters.
They took the reefers and went.
‘Progress,’ Setters said as they drove away from Chase Drive. ‘And me the dumbest screw in the force not to have looked for those sticks sooner. Do you think she really didn’t know?’
‘She didn’t know,’ Gently said. ‘She had suspicions, maybe, but she didn’t want to believe them.’
‘So he was smoking,’ Setters said. ‘That alters the picture just a bit. They were both of them smoking. Might have been high when they crashed.’
‘Yet he leaves the sticks at home,’ Gently said. ‘Why was that?’
‘Just his home supply,’ Setters said. ‘You can maybe buy them in Castlebridge.’
‘Did you find any at the crash?’ Gently asked.
‘No,’ Setters said. ‘But that proves nothing.’
‘You’d have thought they’d have had a spare one about them,’ Gently said.
Setters rubbed his cheek. ‘The girl didn’t have any at home,’ he said. ‘When the medic told us we sent round, but we found nothing there. And it’s right, she ought to have had some. She had a case in her bag. It just wouldn’t be that chummie Elton whipped those reefers, you think?’
‘You’ve met him,’ Gently said.
‘Yeah,’ Setters said slowly. ‘Pass back. He isn’t the type. He’s next to human. He wouldn’t have gone through her bag.’
‘I’ll want to talk to her,’ Gently said. ‘Is there a chance of me doing it?’
‘I’ll ring the blood-house,’ Setters said. ‘But she hasn’t been conscious again since.’
They parked at H.Q. and went through to Setters’ office. He rang the hospital. Betty Turner was still in a coma. Gently had spread out the reefers and the serviette on a sheet of paper on Setter’s desk. He sat looking at them while Setters phoned, pushing them about with the tip of a pen-holder.
Setters hung up.
‘You’ll have heard,’ he said.
Gently shrugged, put down the pen-holder.
‘What do we know about them?’ Setters asked.
‘They’re a common make,’ Gently said. ‘We’ve picked up scores of this type in Soho and points west. They’ve been a headache for some time. You’d better dust them and send them to Narcotics.’
Setters nodded. ‘And the serviette?’
‘Dust that too,’ Gently said. ‘Then put a man on tracing its origin. He can start on the cafes in the Ford Road area.’
‘Yes,’ Setters said. ‘That’s probably where Lister got those sticks on the Tuesday morning. He wasn’t late home so it’d be in the tea-break, and he wouldn’t go far from the site for that.’
‘One other thing,’ Gently said. ‘Suppose you wanted to pull a jeebie. Where’s the most likely place to lay hands on one?’
Setters thought about it. ‘Try the First and Last cafe,’ he said. ‘You’ll find it just out of town on the Norwich Road.’
‘Is it cool, man?’ Gently asked.
‘Bloody arctic,’ said Setters.
‘Like I may make the scene after a meal,’ Gently said.