Gently Go Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

don’t want to know any more than that. It’s bad enough that Johnny is dead. I don’t think I could bear it if it’s something else.’
    Gently nodded. ‘Life can be unkind.’
    ‘Yes.’ She smiled again. ‘Yes.’
    ‘And the worst of it is we have to find him,’ he said.
    ‘I understand that,’ she said. ‘I’m simply selfish.’
    ‘How did it start?’ he asked. ‘All this business. The motorcycling, the slang.’
    ‘I honestly don’t know,’ Mrs Lister said. ‘And yet I do. It happened after Les went.’
    ‘You think that was the cause of it?’ Gently asked.
    ‘I feel it had something to do with it,’ she said, ‘You see, up till that time Johnny was enthusiastic about his career. But Les going upset him terribly. I think there must have been a connection.’
    ‘What was his career to have been?’ Gently asked.
    ‘Building and contracting,’ she said. ‘Les wanted him to be an architect, but Johnny didn’t have the same talent for it. It was the practical side that Johnny was good at. Not just using his hands, but organization. So Les said all right, he’d better not waste time at college, and Johnny went straight into Hailey and Lincon’s. Which is what he wanted to do.’
    ‘Was he happy there?’ Gently asked.
    ‘I thought he was,’ Mrs Lister said. ‘He used to be talking about it always. And he went to evening classes in Castlebridge.’
    ‘Is that how he came to have a motorcycle?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That was mostly the reason. He had a scooter on his sixteenth birthday, but Castlebridge is twenty-five miles from here.’
    ‘And then what happened?’ Gently asked.
    ‘Well, he seemed to lose interest,’ Mrs Lister said. ‘He dropped the classes. He dropped a lot of his old friends. He became moody and secretive, bored when he was at home. I thought perhaps there was a girl in it. I tried to get him to confide in me. Then there was this awful slang and the passion for jazz records, and the silly clothes he used to wear. I kept hoping it was simply a phase. He wouldn’t talk to me about it.’
    ‘He made other friends, didn’t he?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘though not the sort I approved of. He brought them home once or twice, but he soon stopped doing that. I’m to blame I suppose. I ought to have concealed what I thought of them. But I couldn’t help it. They were terrible. I don’t think some of them ever washed. And there they sat, in his room, playing jazz records and smoking. Till the small hours, sometimes. I had to say something.’
    ‘Do you remember who they were?’ Gently asked.
    ‘I’m not sure I knew their names,’ she said. ‘But I remember the Elton boy coming. And Elton’s sister. And Dicky Deeming.’
    ‘Jack Salmon. Frankie Knights.’
    ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t remember. Only Dicky. I thought that Dicky was old enough to have knownbetter. But he’s a writer, of course, so he might have been slumming after material.’ She made a face. ‘If you can call this bungalow a slum,’ she added.
    ‘How old is Deeming then?’
    ‘Oh, thirty-ish,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘He looks younger because he’s boyish, short hair and that. He writes for the little reviews, I’m told, and does book notices and things. He’s our only local author. That’s why I remember him.’
    ‘And Johnny was specially friendly with him?’
    ‘Oh, quite infatuated,’ she said. ‘For a time, you know. A spell of teenage hero-worship. Dicky was what Johnny wanted to be. Cool, I think is the term they use. A rebel against all convention, a jazz expert and etcetera. For a time he was always around with Dicky. Then Dicky faded out again.’
    ‘Was there any reason for that?’ Gently asked.
    ‘I’m not sure,’ said Mrs Lister. ‘It was around that time, or soon after, that he fell so heavily for Betty Turner. Poor girl. She little knew how it would end, her romance with Johnny. But I think she may have displaced Dicky. I remember thinking so at the