And the weeks passed and the evenings drew in and dark fell early. Pitch-dark, that night weeks later when the landlord threw Jellinks out of The Pig and Whistle a good hour before closing time. Pitch-dark with only the lights of the pub shining across the blackness of the country road.
The landlord stood in the doorway. ‘And don’t bloody come back! I’m sick of having to chuck you out, you’re-wrecking my custom here.’
But there wasn’t that much doing in a small wayside pub and Jellinks drank spirits these days and rang up quite a packet on the till before it was time to get rid of him.
‘I don’t want to refuse him altogether, Sam,’ the landlord said to one of his regulars who, with a friend, was on the way out. ‘He pays. But what’s got into him these days, I don’t know. Never used to overdo it the way he does now. Most nights he spent in here—’
‘Most nights he spent in the jug,’ said Sam. ‘In and out like a yo-yo. Chuck a brick in a window, grab a handful and make a getaway—’
‘Getaway seems not just the word,’ said the friend, laughing.
‘Still, it’s true. Whenever he was out—well, he was in. In the Pig, I mean. But I never saw him tight, never.’ The two men started together down the steps. ‘My opinion—he’s scared of something.’
‘He’s the chap that ran down some girl and a child?’
‘That’s right. Her father, Evans—resident copper, he is—Evans saw it happen. But he still gave evidence—villain wasn’t going too fast, all the rest of it. He could easy have said he was, but he didn’t. Stood up there in court—I could scarcely believe my ears—’
They could scarcely believe their ears. ‘Not going fast?’
‘No, Sergeant, not fast at all.’
A different officer this time, new in the division. ‘But he must have been, to catch the man a wallop like that!’ He threw out a hand toward the dark hump in the center of the road. ‘He’s dead.’
‘His own fault. We both saw it,’ said Sam earnestly, ‘me and Jim here, coming down the steps. Tight as a tick he was. I was saying so to Jim, tight as a tick.’
‘Reeling all over the road,’ said Jim. ‘You couldn’t miss him.’
‘What do you mean?—you couldn’t miss him.’
‘You couldn’t help hitting him,’ said Jim. ‘That’s all. What else?’
‘And that’s your story too, Constable Evans? He reeled out in front of your car?’
You could see the fingers tighten, the slight recoil. But Evans said evenly, ‘That’s right. My story, like you say.’
‘I don’t mean to offend you,’ said the sergeant. ‘I don’t mean that. But… these two gentlemen—they’re friends of yours?’
‘Never set eyes on him in my life,’ said Jim, ‘whatever it is you’re suggesting.’
‘Not a friend of his?’
‘No, I am not. And not a liar either.’
‘All right, well, I’m sorry.’
‘He drove round the bend doing—thirty, forty—not more. The landlord had told the other chap to clear out—’
‘All according to cocker, Sarge,’ said the landlord righteously. ‘I don’t have to serve a customer that’s drunk. And Jellinks is drunk every night, and every night I chucks him out. Right, Sam?’
‘To the great relief of all,’ said Sam.
‘So you didn’t like the man?’
‘Nobody liked the man,’ said Sam. ‘Not unless they was fond of snakes. But that doesn’t mean I’d stand and watch him murdered in front of my eyes, and me and my mate tell lies about it. Evans was driving regular, Jellinks was staggering around, and that was the end of it.’
‘And the end of Jellinks.’
‘That’s right,’ said Constable Evans. ‘And am I sorry for it? No, I’m not.’
‘No,’ said the new sergeant thoughtfully. He suggested, but tentatively—they seemed to be a touchy lot round here—‘You just happened to be driving this way?’
‘Yes,’ said Bill tonelessly. ‘Up to the cemetery.’
‘At nine o’clock at night?’
‘Night or day, it makes no odds to me. I go when I’m off duty.’ And now the tone of his voice did question: any objection?
‘To visit your daughter’s—’ The sergeant broke off. ‘Yes, I know about that. I understand.’
‘Yes, well… That’ll save me explaining then, in so many words, that I drive out to the cemetery to say my prayers by the grave of my girl, lying in her coffin there, with her baby in her arms.’ And he jerked the toe of his solid, black, hobnailed boot toward the figure, laid out now, by the side of the road. ‘Killed by—him.’