Death of a Bovver Boy Read Free Page A

too optimistic. I’m a bit out of my depths with all these young skinheads, greasers, hippies andmuggers. But I shan’t keep anything from you. Facts, I mean. Theories are my own affair till they are strong enough to hand over. Agreed?’
    â€˜Agreed. I’d like to see the D.S’s face if he heard us exchanging those words. He’s a sort of a caricature of a television Super. Has it ever occurred to you that Z
Cars
and the rest have materially influenced the Police Force? Life following Art, if you call them art.’
    â€˜Television policemen are infallible, invariably infallible,’ said Carolus.
    Grimsby did not rise to that. He pulled out a notebook and began to give Carolus some more detailed and factual information about Hartington and its people. This Carolus noted carefully. Then, after Grimsby had refused a drink, the policeman prepared to leave.
    â€˜I’ve purposely not given you any theories I may have, or am beginning to form,’ said Grimsby. ‘Because they’re not worth having yet. You’ll know more in an hour than I’ve been able to conclude in two days. I’m hoping you’ll go your own way. But you won’t be bored, Mr Deene. I can assure you of that.’
    â€˜My name’s Carolus. And I’m not easily bored, especially by murder. It
was
murder, I suppose?’
    â€˜Yes. The boy had been suffocated after being tied up.’
    â€˜I rather thought that was how it was done. Poor little sod.’
    â€˜Don’t be too ready with your sympathy till you’ve learned a bit more about him, Carolus.’
    â€˜I’ll repress my kindly instincts.’
    â€˜Until you know there is cause for them.’
    Grimsby smiled and left Carolus. His car was started and Carolus looked after its disappearing number plate.
    Mrs Stick came in almost at once.
    â€˜I could see he was from the police,’ she boasted. ‘You can always tell. I suppose he’d come about the murder?’
    â€˜He wanted some details about the finding of the body.’
    â€˜I hope you told him what a nasty shock it was. Stick hasn’t really got over it yet.’
    She was stopped by a prolonged ringing of the front door bell. Her hand went to her heart with a rather exaggerated gesture.
    â€˜Whoever can that be?’ she asked Carolus rhetorically as she went to the window. ‘Oh. Thank goodness. It’s only Mr Hollingbourne,’ she added, naming one of Carolus’s colleagues on the staff of the Queen’s School, Newminster, a philoprogenitive character whose children already numbered seven. ‘He won’t have come about anything to do with murders, that’s one sure thing.’
    But Mrs Stick was wrong, for once. Hollingbourne, tall, humourless and usually somewhat hostile to Carolus whom he regarded as a playboy, sat bolt upright in a chair and announced unnecessarily—‘I wanted to see you, Deene.’
    Carolus nodded. There was nothing else to do.
    â€˜The Head tells me you are making enquiries about the young fellow found dead on Sunday night?’
    Carolus, who disliked Hollingbourne’s way of referring to Mr Gorringer as though he were an earthly deity, like a newspaper proprietor, again nodded.
    â€˜I can tell you something about him,’ Hollingbourne said astoundingly.
    â€˜You can? How on earth does that happen?’
    Hollingbourne got down to serious narrative.
    â€˜As you may know,’ he said. ‘The wife and I areaccustomed to take the children for a summer holiday to the seaside. We choose some place with a sandy beach where they can play cricket and so on. Those that are old enough, that is.’
    â€˜Quite.’
    â€˜Three years ago it was to Kingsgate. Excellent sands and not too far away.’
    â€˜Of course.’
    â€˜But unlike you, Deene, I was not provided by my parents with a large private income and in order to meet the expenses of a summer holiday for