Gently Where the Roads Go

Book 0: George Gently

by Alan Hunter

Genres: Classics

Synopsis

Murdered in a lonely lay-by in the heart of the countryside, a trucker is identified as a Polish immigrant. Was this a revenge killing, a quarrel over money, an underworld execution or something even more sinister? The more Gently delves into the circumstances of the murdered man, the more complicated the case becomes until, with machine-gun bullets ripping into his car, the whole affair turns very nasty. Gently must unravel the dead man's complicated past and track down the murderer before he becomes the next victim!

Release date: April 19, 2012

Publisher: Constable

Print pages: 225

Sample

IN THE EAST country the air is sparkling, in the west country the air is tender, but in this place, in the middle of England, the air is asleep all the time. It isn’t flat, it isn’t hilly. It isn’t beautiful, it isn’t ugly. It isn’t town on the one hand nor country, quite, on the other. It is the land of the Great Road, a subsection missed by the geographers, a land moulded and informed by the great passages of men. First the prehistoric tribes, sending their slinking scouts before them, moving cautiously over the lowlands to unhunted forest upcountry; then the Celts, the horse-tamers, chanting songs of Bran and Gwydion; and the Romans, great marchers, paving the miles to Pictishland; followed Angle and Saxon, fierce quarrellers and kingdomers, the Danska, fiercer than them all, and his French-speaking cousins; baron, pedlar, shuffling friar, tinker, soldier, murderer, thief, riding, treading, rolling the wheels of their ponderous slow carriage; Armada message, crop-haired troopers, levies northward to Culloden; po-shay, mail-coach and curricle along with fret-chimneyed steamers; and the coughing, clanking upstart following its symbolical red flag, maturing quickly, multiplying, inheriting the Road in a generation. All these set their stamp on the passive, silent land, making it like no other land: that which bounded the Great Road. Having for meaning, southwards to London, weary marches to the Tweed, the environs of an inn, the turn which concealed a highwayman. Nobody came there to look at it, nobody saw it with pleasure. Ghosts tilled it, ghosts dwelt in it, but North and South was its only significance. Day by day, century by century, traffic and souls crowded through it; sterilizing it by long denial into the rank of the semi-real. And still today nobody sees it, the anonymous fields and dusty hedgerows, the chaffy verges, the soiled copses, the ugly ribbons of unpainted houses; only the rubber-blackened road and the ever-rolling files of traffic, and the signs, fixing points in the long abstraction of North and South. Nobody sees it. Until one day a spotlight falls hard and sharp on a small section. When the semi-real becomes real. But perhaps no more understandable.

‘Wanda.’

‘You.’

Teodowicz was sitting on her bed. He was a big man with high cheekbones and eyes that gleamed between narrowed lids. She hadn’t seen him come in, but that was the way with Teodowicz. He sat there shirtless, gleaming with sweat, scratching the brown hair on his chest.

‘I didn’t know you were coming tonight.’

‘Have I upset something?’ He was apologetic.

‘No, damn you. Do you think I have a man here every night?’

He shrugged, a faint check with his shoulders. ‘Not every night. You’re not insatiable. And it doesn’t matter, not to me. You can have as many men as you like.’

‘Thank you for nothing.’

She came into the room. The room was small and airless and sweet-smelling. It contained the bed with its faded green overlay and a wardrobe and dressing-table, huddled together. She didn’t switch on the light. A dim light was coming out of the parlour. At eleven p.m. it was still sweltering and she herself wore only a dress. She went to the dressing-table, found cigarettes, swore because she broke a match in lighting one.

‘Have you been here long?’

‘Only half an hour.’

He spoke without a trace of accent. But because of that you knew immediately that you were dealing with a foreigner.

‘I thought I wasn’t seeing you till Wednesday. Why this sudden change of plan?’

He shrugged again, saying nothing, his eyes inspecting her hungrily.

‘Something wrong, is there?’

‘Put that fag out.’

‘Oh no.’ She struck a defiant attitude. ‘I’m tired. I’ve got some coffee on. You can cut out the funny business till later.’

‘Put it out.’

‘I tell you you can wait.’

‘I’m not in a mood for waiting, Wanda.’

‘And I’m not in the mood for getting on the bed. So you can lump it.’

‘Put that fag out.’

She was suddenly frightened by his tone of voice; it was so flat and self-intent. And then, as was usual with all her emotions, the fear translated itself into the erotic. She stabbed the cigarette into an ashtray.

‘All right, you bastard,’ she said. ‘Bloody have it.’

‘Take your dress off.’

‘Can’t you unwrap the goods?’

‘Do as I say. Take it off.’

She sniffed, but hoisted the dress up, and stood naked by the dressing-table.

‘Men,’ she said scathingly.

‘Come here.’

‘Come and get it, if you want it.’

‘You will come here.’

‘I’m damned if I will.’

‘Wanda,’ he said, ‘you will come here.’

Again the jolt of fear, twisting itself into an aphrodisiac.

‘You bullying swine,’ she said, coming. But not quite within reach. ‘You can’t damn well order me around. I’m not a pro, and you know it.’

‘Come closer.’

‘What’s got into you?’

‘You hear what I say?’

He lifted his two large, hairy, hands, the fingers crooked like grappling irons.

She gave a crooning sort of moan.

‘You Polish bastard,’ she said.

‘Get on the bed.’

‘You’re a swine.’

‘Just do as I say. Get on the bed.’

She got on the bed. He penetrated her with little or no foreplay. It was unusual. She had always known him as a cultivated lover. Fiercely and intently he took what he wanted, then lay, completely spent, a dead weight in her embrace. She felt defrauded, a little uneasy; what was wrong with him tonight? She wasn’t satisfied, he didn’t care; he seemed a long way off.

‘You’re heavy,’ she moaned.

He separated from her and lay on his back. The bed was not a full double and he was still heavy on her arm. She shifted it irritably. One leg rolled off. She sat up to prevent the rest of her following. She felt angry with him. He’d given her nothing. He was beginning to treat her like a habit.

‘Get me a cigar out of my jacket.’

‘Why should I get your damn cigar?’

He rolled his head over. His face was shiny. It looked complacent; and he smiled.

‘Just get me a cigar.’

She breathed heavily and felt for his jacket. It was an oil-stained khaki garment which he always wore when driving a truck. In the breast pocket were the cigars, a tin of Dutch ‘Willem II’s’. She stuck one between his thick lips and held a match to it. He sucked.

‘Happy now?’

‘Huh,’ he grunted. ‘Didn’t you talk about some coffee?’

‘You’ve a bloody nerve!’ she fired at him.

He smiled again.

‘A big cup.’

She didn’t bother to dress again. She went through naked to the counter. The large coffee machine was cold but a percolator was bubbling on an electric ring. She took two cups from under the counter, of the size preferred by the truck-drivers, scooped demerara sugar into them and filled them with the coffee, black. When she returned to the bedroom Teodowicz was still lying on his back. He had his head cradled in his arms and the room was heavy with his cigar smoke. He sat up to take the cup, blew on it, and drank a big draught; then he set it on the floor and resumed his former position. Wanda re-lit the stubbed cigarette. She sat down on the single, flimsy chair.

‘Acting the big man,’ she said sourly. ‘Tim Teodowicz. The big man.’

He gave his little flicking shrug. He puffed smoke through his wide nostrils.

‘I was a big man, once,’ he said. ‘Back in Poland. Did you know that, Wanda?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know it.’

‘But I was.’ He smiled at nothing. ‘I was the mayor of a big town. That seems funny, don’t you think? A town as big as Leicester, say. I was the mayor of that town.’

‘What was the name of it?’ she jeered.

‘It doesn’t matter, not the name. If I told you, what would that be? A funny name in a funny country. But I was the mayor, and a big man. Lots of money, pretty women. If I did not like a man it went hard with that man.’

‘And now the big man is a truck driver.’

‘Uhuh,’ Teodowicz said. He was speaking in his soft, purring tone. He used that tone when he was satisfied. ‘Now I own a couple of trucks in a little town in England. Very funny, don’t you think? Everything is very funny.’

‘Where’s Madsen?’ Wanda said.

‘Ove? He’s up in Scotland. A load of machine parts for Glasgow. Are you interested in Ove?’

‘He’s all right,’ she said.

This time Teodowicz directed the smile.

‘You like it a lot, don’t you?’ he said. ‘That’s all right. It does not worry me. You get a woman who likes it so much, she is usually one you can depend on. And I can depend on you, Wanda. You like the men, but you love me.’

‘What makes you so bloody certain of that?’

He waved the cigar. ‘I have a knack for it. That is why I am lying here, Wanda, instead of pushing up the daisies. During the war it was not easy for some of us to keep alive, and after the war still harder. But what do you know of that in England? Here, you have never known a war. Oh, it is nice to be English! The government robs you, you rob the government: those are the facts of life in England. Very gentlemanly, very just. I make a very good Englishman.

She sniffed at the coffee cup she was nursing, sitting droopingly naked. Her whole body was swearing at him for denying it its rights. Outside on the Road the traffic grumbled and buzzed, never thinning very much till around dawn, and just after. Now it was twenty minutes to twelve. It would go on rolling for four hours more.

‘You’re a rotten sod, Tim,’ she said.

‘I know.’ The flicking shrug again. ‘Sometime you will understand, Wanda. I wanted it badly. It happens at times. You don’t know, you are too English; the English are not conditioned as we are. A Polish woman would have understood. Perhaps it is good you are not a Pole.’

‘I wouldn’t damn well want to be,’ she said. ‘And you’ll never be an Englishman, either.’

The smile came back. ‘I am agreeing,’ he said. ‘I think it may be time I gave up trying.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I am going away, Wanda.’

She jerked up straight. ‘When?’

‘Soon.’

‘Where to?’

He stirred lazily, his lids drooping, cat-like.

‘I think to America,’ he said.

‘America! They’d never let you in.’

‘I’m not proposing to give them the option.’

‘You’re mad, Tim. Quite mad.’

He reached for his coffee, drank noisily. ‘The reverse,’ he said. ‘I’m being sane. I have a knack, you remember? It has kept me alive so far.’

‘But why? Is it the police?’

‘The police!’ He chuckled. ‘They are my friends. No, your English policemen are wonderful. That is true – oh, so true.’

‘Then . . . what?’

The shrug. ‘My instinct. I feel I’ve been here long enough. And you are coming with me, Wanda. That is why I am telling you this.’

‘Me – to America?’

‘Yes. I will fix it.’

‘Man,’ she said, ‘you’re really high.’

He shook his head. ‘I am stone cold sober. You are coming with me. We are leaving soon.’

She sat very still on the hard chair, trying to see his eyes in the semi-darkness. And he was watching her too, from his shadows, from under the almost-closed lids.

‘I can’t,’ she said at last. ‘This place.’

‘I’ll appoint an agent to sell it for you,’ he said.

‘What about your trucks?’

‘Madsen can have them.’

‘Just like that?’

‘I am not entirely impoverished.’

‘Christ,’ she said. ‘When do we go?’

He sat up, shaking with his low chuckle. ‘Soon we go. When all is ready. I am playing it by ear, as the Yankees say. So you must be ready, day or night, just to lock those doors and go. You will be discreet, especially with men. You are not to mention my name at all. I will tell you more in a little while. I shall be back quite soon, Wanda.’

He stood up, tall, massive, the hair on his chest dark with sweat. She smelt the odour of his sweat as he reached for the jacket. He put it on, but didn’t button it. It was all he wore in the summer. He was a good fifty, perhaps more, but tough as rawhide. And virile.

She gave a moan. ‘Don’t go yet.’

He took her breasts in his hands and kissed her.

‘I shall be back.’

‘No. Stay.’

‘There are things to be done. I must go.’

‘But – do you mean it? This going to America?’

‘Have I ever said what I didn’t mean?’

‘It’s so bloody mad,’ she groaned.

He was smiling. ‘You will see.’

And then he was gone, moving silently, avoiding the close-packed furniture in the next room; vanishing away out of the house while the warmth of his hands was still on her. She sat desolate, listening for the latch click, but this too was managed silently. All she heard was the buzz of his van as he drove out of the park and towards Offingham. Midnight. She had had him for exactly an hour. Their loving had lasted, at the most, ten minutes.

‘The rotten so-and-so,’ she kept murmuring.

Though the room was so warm, her flesh felt chill.

Statement by Robert Arthur Goodings, truck-driver, 42, of Bellingham Crescent, Plaistow, witnessed by Detective-Sergeant Felling, CID, Offingham Constabulary. I left Middlesbrough at 11.10 p.m. on Monday August 12 with a consignment of industrial sulphuric acid for Simper and Parkes of Croydon. I proceeded through Stockton to Darlington and continued down the A1 till I passed the turning to Offingham, which would be at about 4.30 a.m. on Tuesday August 13th. It was beginning to get light, and I thought I would pull up at the lay-by between Offingham and Baddesley for refreshment and a nap. As I came up to it I noticed a green Commer 10-cwt. van already parked there. I pulled in behind it.

Because even the Great Road has its moments of quietness, when the traffic strangely fades, as though an hour had struck which was uncanny for it. It happens at dawn, at the beginning of light, and lasts for a while after sun-up, when the night drivers are resting before the early drivers set out. Then, for a space, the Road is spellbound in that greyish, brooding light; the bruised surface lies deserted, like a fairground when the crowds have gone; sparrows chip along the verges, rattle the paper which wrapped sandwiches; a pheasant may strut in the yellowish field, there is even dew on the dusty hedges. And a solitary car – who is driving now? – scuttles along like a guilty animal, hastening to find a town or village to protect it with their walls.

And Robert Goodings finds a lay-by between Offingham and Baddesley, perhaps the only lay-by on the Road beyond sight and sound of any dwelling. Across the fields, three miles away, rise the pastelled cones of Bintly Power Station; to the south of them, still a long way off, the slant grey roof of an aircraft hanger; up the road, two miles, a drab ribbon called Everham; down the road, out of sight round a bend, a forlorn roadhous. . .