Gently Sinking by Alan Hunter

Author:Alan Hunter
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781472104625
Publisher: Constable & Robinson

CHAPTER SEVEN

WHEN GENTLY LEFT, Sharkey stayed in the kitchen and it was Sarah who showed the Yard man out. At the foyer she glanced back quickly, then laid her hand on Gently’s arm. She looked up at him earnestly.

‘You ain’t angry with me, sir?’

‘No,’ Gently said. ‘Just doubtful.’

‘You don’t have no cause to be doubtful, sir.’

‘It’s my way,’ Gently said. ‘I’m a policeman.’

The hand on his arm was quivering.

‘That’s the truth I was saying in there,’ she said. ‘It ain’t just on account of I’m Sharkey’s missus. I do really know he was here at the Club.’

Gently said nothing.

‘You believe me, sir?’ she asked.

‘I’ll need corroboration,’ Gently said. ‘I hear talk of a hundred people I can ask, but so far nobody’s mentioned a name.’

Her almond-shaped eyes narrowed.

‘We got a staff here, sir,’ she said. ‘There’s four waitresses and the doorman. They all tell you the same as me.’

‘Is that corroboration?’ Gently said.

‘Then there’s all those people,’ Sarah Sunshine said quickly. ‘We give you names there, sir, addresses and names. ’Bout twenty or thirty your young man took.’

‘And what can these twenty or thirty tell me?’

‘They tell you Sharkey is here all evening.’

‘Were they watching him?’ Gently asked.

‘They must have seen him around, sir. He’s running the bar. They got to have seen him.’

‘Let’s get this straight,’ Gently said. ‘He runs the bar – and nobody else does.’

Her hand pulled on his arm.

‘I ain’t exactly saying that, sir. But he’s in and out all the time, he ain’t away from there for long.’

‘Meanwhile,’ Gently said, ‘the band is playing, the lights going up and down, people dancing, singing. They aren’t watching your husband, if he’s in or out, or when he’s out, or for how long. Is that corroboration?’

‘Oh, gosh, yes, sir.’

‘No,’ Gently said. ‘We can shoot it to pieces. And your word is suspect because you’re his wife. And the staff’s is suspect. Your husband doesn’t have an alibi.’

A tremor passed over Sarah Sunshine’s face. Her eyes held to his insistently.

‘Sir, I know it’s true,’ she said. ‘Cain’t you just believe me? I’s certain, I’s sure he ain’t mixed up with this.’

‘How are you so sure?’

‘I just am, sir.’

‘Because you know he was here.’

‘Yes, sir, I do know that.’

‘Or is it because you know Sadie wasn’t here?’

‘Sadie . . .’

Her eyes jumped and the hand trembled. She looked away.

‘Sadie was in her room,’ she said. ‘I know that, too, sir. I went in there twice. She gone to bed with a headache. I go in there ’bout quarter to ten-time to take her a hot drink. She surely is there. She is reading a novel.’

‘There’s a back way out of here?’

‘Sadie never did—’

‘And perhaps a short-cut to the station,’ Gently said. ‘You’re lying, Mrs Sunshine. Sadie wasn’t in her room. Not at quarter to ten. Perhaps not at all.’

‘Oh you man, you man,’ Sarah Sunshine wailed.

‘What time did she go out?’ Gently said.

‘She never did go—’

‘She went out, and she went out to Blackburn’s flat. You know. And you know too that she was intimate with Grey.

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