“What about girls?” Ray took over again. “You said he offered it about. Did it work?”
“Of course. You take enough chances, and you’ll always get lucky. Gerald knew that, and he did all right. He wasn’t fussed about who either.”
“How do you mean?”
“Colour, creed, ring on their finger. None of it mattered. Wouldn’t surprise me to hear that there’s fifty little baby Geralds around here, way he carried on.”
“Anyone ever take issue with that? Jealous husbands? Jilted lovers.”
“I’m sure he had a few clips around the ear for it. Wore a shiner like a badge of honour on more than one occasion.”
“Know any names that might be of interest to us?”
“Names? You think Gerald did names? Not to me anyway. That’d be making them people and he did not treat women like people.”
Another customer approached the bar on the lounge side and Phyllis excused herself. She didn’t return when she had finished serving him. Joseph scanned the room behind them, looking for anyone who looked a likely suspect.
A single elderly gentleman sat at the table nearest the fire. He wore a black woollen jersey which, by the holes in it, could have been as old as him. A bedraggled terrier lay curled up under his feet. His boots had come apart at the seams his face smeared with the grime of a hard day’s work. Joseph couldn’t remember him moving since they entered. His dirty hand clasped a half-drunk pint in front of him. The head on the beer had long since fizzled out. He had his eyes barely open, his gaze set on a point somewhere in the distance, on something only he could see. Joseph contemplated asking if he was all right, but then he saw a small twitch of the man’s grubby index finger which reassured him that he was at least alive.
At another table, three men huddled around, dressed in matching black jackets that they hadn’t removed, indulging in loud, boisterous, substance-free conversation. The empty pots on the table suggested that they had been there a while. On another table, two men, one black and one white, sat silently engrossed in a game of dominoes.
“What do you think?” Ray asked him, still leaning against the bar, as if in forlorn hope of the return of Phyllis.
“I think every door we open gives us another list of people who didn’t like Gerald Trainer,” Joseph said.
“He does not appear to be a gentleman of good standing, no. Bit of a fizzer.” ‘Fizzer’ was Ray’s replacement for swearing. Over the time the two had worked together, Joseph had never heard Ray utter a single curse, which, given some of the things they’d dealt with, felt like something of an accomplishment. “Do you want another?”
Joseph did not want another. The taste of the beer meant that he’d barely drunk half of what he had in front of him, even with the aid of the cigarette to mask it. With one last gulp, Ray finished his, before the two of them put their coats and hats back on and made their way out. They had barely made it to the kerb when someone shouted from behind them.
“Here, now.” The Black gentleman from the dominoes game came shuffling towards them. “I hear you say Gerald been killed?”
“That’s right,” Ray replied.
“Now that’s a sad, sad thing.” The man shook his head.
“Did you know him?”
“Of course. You can’t not be knowing him. Sure, Phyllis told you that.”
“What’s your name, sir?”
“Ha, now I know you want something from me, calling me ‘sir’.” The man smiled as he toyed with them. “My name’s Cyril Baker.”
“And what can you tell us about Gerald?”
“All that talk you heard then, about how he played around and stuff, that’s what it was. Talk. Nothing more. The man had a couple of girlfriends, but he weren’t going around door to door. He had a steady girl – although, fair enough, she did have her own man as well, but that’s on her, not him.”
“He was in a relationship with a married woman?”
“That’s right.”
Joseph pulled his notepad out, ready to record anything pertinent. “I don’t suppose you know the name of the girl?”
“Janet Scott. She lives somewhere south of here, not sure where. Couldn’t be too far though. He’d often be in here after. You could tell when he had. Man was happy.”
“Did her boyfriend, husband, whatever, know about their affair?”
“Husband, and that I could not tell you. I don’t know that man and Gerald, well, whilst he didn’t keep the best secret, he didn’t let on everything that went on there. I think he wanted to make it a permanent thing, but him being him and her being her and all, I don’t think she could walk away and not be punished.”
“How do you mean?”
“She was white,” Cyril said with a laugh that made the whole thing sound like it should have been obvious. “How can she walk away from a white husband to a black man and not be the bad one in this? And him, for that. No, best they carried on in secret. Too much hassle otherwise.”
Ray nodded. “Thank you, Cyril. Will you let us know if you hear anything else?”
“You the coppers down on Market Street?”
“That’s us.”
“I’ll let you know. Gerald weren’t the bad man they make him out to be. They just see him different. Of course they do.”
5.
Joseph and Ray had spent a little time in the office, collating their notes, ensuring they were both on the same page as regards what they had learned on that first day, before finally departing a little after five. Joseph’s commute took him by bus, across the river, into Forest Gate in the east of London. It didn’t take long to walk from the bus stop to his house, a double-fronted detached house on a straight and long avenue that ran from west to east. It was too grand a house for his detective’s wage to be covering alone, but with what Dziko Mphande bought to their family, they had been more than able to live beyond his means.
By the time he got home, the sun had set, bringing with it the cold. He could see the lights downstairs through the cracks in the closed curtains. He slipped his key into the lock, then pushed open the solid wooden door, the heat from inside rushing to embrace him as he stepped in.
“Hello,” he called, closing the door behind him, the smell of spices he couldn’t name coming from the rear of the house, conjuring visions of places he’d never been to, never even heard of.
