Gently with the Ladies (Inspector George Gently 13)

. . predictable. People would know how you’d take it.’
    ‘Ask anyone – even La Bannister. I haven’t faced up to a problem for years. I know you can argue that I’m a weakling and that this is a weakling’s way out, but I’m not just weak: I’m a bum too. That’s the middle and crux of the business.’
    ‘You’d have given her up and cried with Brenda.’
    ‘Yes. Except I wouldn’t have cried. And then I’d have settled to the round again, a naughty boy with his knuckles rapped.’
    ‘And into this predictable pattern, you’re saying . . .’
    ‘I’m not saying anything. I’m taking it back. I can’t believe such a thing of Sybil any more than I can of myself.’
    ‘But that cigarette smoke was a fact?’
    ‘So Sybil had been there. But she didn’t do it.’
    ‘Somebody did.’
    ‘Put it down to a burglar.’
    Gently stared at him and shook his head.
    Fazakerly leaned back and sighed. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Have it your way. It probably makes the most sense, and it might as well be me who takes the rap. At least I’m getting something out of it. I’ve sloughed my old bumming skin. I’ll be an aristocrat where I’m going: it’s a sort of spiritual rags to riches.’
    ‘And that’s all you can say about it?’
    ‘Yes. Stop wasting your time with me.’
    ‘You could confess.’
    ‘I could spit. But just now I haven’t the energy.’
    He gave Gently a hard look, and Gently grunted and rang the bell. He shoved his chair back and got up. Fazakerly followed him with his eyes. Then, when Gently had reached the door, he said:
    ‘Will you be seeing Sarah at all?’
    Gently stopped. ‘And if I do?’
    ‘Tell her I’m sorry. That’s all.’

 
     
    CHAPTER SIX
     
    A FTER GREENWICH IT was a pretty smooth run through to Rochester, with the Sceptre slipping along at seventy for much of the way. The drive was soothing. Gently hadn’t been out of town for a month, and the soft boom of the Rootes engine seemed to relax a tension. He was driving off the top and enjoying the sensation. Perhaps, except for the promise of this jaunt, he wouldn’t have bothered about Sarah Johnson. At one moment was balanced in his mind the drab rush-hour plod home to Finchley and the straight stretches of the A2; and the A2 had won. And he was glad. The Sceptre felt good. It was handling like a surgical instrument. For a while it was even pushing to a distance the nagging conviction that he was making a fool of himself over Fazakerly . . .
    Limit signs sprang upon him and he let the engine pull his speed down. The Sceptre crept through Strood and across the dull flood of the Medway. He turned down through the traffic about the Castle into the quieter waters of the Esplanade, and then left into a cul-de-sac bearing the name Vosper Gardens. He drove along it. Vosper Gardens was a road of slightly shabby detached houses. They were mid-Victorian in character and peered shyly from among mature trees and tall shrubs. At the top however, standing flush to the pavement, was a building which once perhaps had been a coach-house, a barn-shaped structure of red brick with a high roof of blue-black pantiles. It was presumably still in use as a store or garage, but at one end were two casement windows and a door. Gently coasted the Sceptre up to it and parked. At the slam of his door, pigeons rose.
    He rang. There was movement inside but his ring was not directly answered. He had time to study the splines and bolt-heads of the door and the name, Parson’s Mews, painted across it. Then the wrought-iron handle turned squeakily and he was faced by a brunette of about thirty.
    ‘Miss Johnson?’
    ‘Are you the police?’
    ‘Chief Superintendent Gently. May I come in?’
    Her face was pale and she stared uncertainly at him. No doubt he was not very welcome.
    ‘It’s . . . Johnny, of course?’
    ‘Yes, John Fazakerly. I’ve just come away from talking with him.’
    ‘Oh. He wouldn’t – he didn’t send a message?’
    ‘A short message. Shall we go in?’
    She stood aside from the door and admitted him to a little tiled hall. Then she opened a second door and they passed into a small sitting-room. It was a dull, ill-lighted room with few concessions to decoration; a framed Renoir print hung opposite the window and an Egyptian tapestry on another wall. A mahogany dining-table, too large for the room, was pushed up close to the window, and on it were spread the panels of a knitted garment and a paper covered