Read Online Last Detective by Leslie Thomas - Free Book Online Page B

him good-afternoon, by name. Mrs Norris approached, unseen and, unerringly picking him out, announced: ‘I’m here.’
    Davies, disgruntled, followed her across the rainy road, and into the café. She indicated that she was running the situation by nodding him towards a corner table. Obediently he shuffled off to the marble slab while she joined the self-service line. He watched her from his distance. She had been tall but, although she was only in her fifties, her back was beginning to bend. The face was fatigued and fixed, looking straight at the neck of the woman before her in the queue, her eyes flicking around occasionally but only briefly before returning to the stare. Davies sat and opened the buttons of his coat. An Indian at the next table ate Heinz spaghetti and double chips and was anointing it with whorls of brown sauce. He sang quietly to himself, some song doubtless born in cool faraway hills, interrupting the plaint to slurp loudly from his cup.
    Mrs Norris arrived with the tea, her eyes sharp. ‘All right, then,’ she sighed tiredly when she had seated herself opposite him. ‘What’s going on about our Celia?’
    â€˜New information has come to light, Mrs Norris,’ he said in the policeman’s manner he sometimes practised before his bedroom mirror. ‘A man has talked. I can’t tell you what he has said but he has talked.’
    â€˜Why can’t you?’
    â€˜These things have to be proved,’ he replied uncomfortably. ‘Without preconceived ideas.’
    â€˜Preconceived ideas,’ she snorted into her tea. ‘They was talking about them twenty-five years ago. Is it the same lot of ideas or a new lot?’
    He nodded sympathetically. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said, ‘I can guess what it’s been like for you.’
    â€˜No, you can’t,’ she whispered, her eyes and nose almost in her cup. ‘Nobody can. She was a good girl, Mr Davies. Very good. She used to bring me flowers and not many kids do that. And they tried to make out she was some kind of prostitute just because they never found her drawers.’ She sniffed and when she raised her eyes, Davies saw they were smudgy.
    â€˜Don’t cry, Mrs Norris,’ he said with hurried helplessness. ‘Not in Lyons.’
    â€˜I won’t,’ she promised. ‘It’s not so easy as you think to cry. Not after all this time.’ She paused then looked at him with sad hope. ‘How far have you got?’
    â€˜I’ve only just started. But I believe that after all this time, people will say things they only thought twenty-five years ago, or things they didn’t even realize they knew.’
    She nodded. ‘People do change their tune,’ she agreed. ‘I know that. Too well.’
    â€˜How?’ he said. ‘In what way?’
    â€˜Well, you know. They’re all sympathy and that at the time, then they avoid you and the whispers start going around. About my girl. And they’re still at it. I mean, you know she went off once before. She was headstrong like that. One of the bloody Sunday papers brought the whole thing up again a couple of years ago, “What Happened to Happy Celia?” That was the headline. They sent some bloke to see me. I chucked a bucket of soapsuds over him.’
    â€˜You do want the answer, don’t you?’ he said.
    â€˜Yes I do, but not that way. Not all over the bleeding newspapers. Muckraking, that’s all that was. It’s got to be done a bit on the quiet. That’s the only way you or anybody else is going to find out any thing.’
    â€˜When she went off before,’ said Davies, ‘was that with a man?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ she replied almost sulkily. ‘When she came back she didn’t say. She said she had been away for a change. I never asked her after that.’
    The café was almost empty for it was mid-afternoon. Steam rose from the