15. WHO'S A NAUGHTY GIRL, THEN?

A Chapter by Peter Rogerson

The Punch and Judy man has ideas

“Who’s a naughty girl, then, who’s a naughty girl,” squawked the swazzle voice from inside the thespian tent of the Punch and Judy man. The two women looked at each other helplessly and Trayda frowned.

“We’re with the police,” she said sharply. She’d never liked Punch and Judy as an entertainment, even as a child when the whole idea of a male puppet murdering a female puppet and abusing a policeman had seemed grotesquely unfair.

“She’s with the police, she’s with the police,” squawked Mr Punch as if he was enjoying the whole idea of tormenting officers of the law. Trayda was going to have none of it. She frowned at Angela, then, “we’d rather like to have a word with the man rather than his idiot puppet,” she said sharply.

“Okay, okay keep your hair on!” growled a voice from within the tent, and Foxy Dingall emerged from the entrance behind it, “only joking,” he added with a humourless scowl.

“We’re collecting and collating information for the police,” Trayda told him, “though not employed directly by the force itself, I am a qualified Detective Inspector and I must warm you I take a dim view of having my time wasted by childish japes.”

“Get on with it then,” he growled.

“Tell me,” she asked, “have you always been a Punch and Judy operator? Your face is somewhat familiar … let me see, my memory’s coming back to me, some years ago now didn’t you draw attention to yourself by scamming a small fortune out of old ladies in the Midlands? Make-believe shares, wasn’t it? Yes, that was it! Guaranteed double-your money in a twinkling? So, Mr Dingall, we’re investigating a rather nasty murder and on the look out for likely candidates”

“I wouldn’t hurt a fly!” snapped Foxy warily, “you can’t pin anything like murder on me. So I might have made mistakes in the past, but that’s a long time ago and I make an honest living entertaining kids these days. Kids like a morality tale, you know, and there’s not much more moral that Punch and Judy!”

“So what do you know about David Stokesey?” asked Angela, taking an instant dislike to the man and his views on morality.

“He was a fool to himself,” growled Foxy, “and I told him so, to his face! He had an eye for the ladies and always expected them to have an eye for him and, truth to tell, a few of them did. He’d swagger about in those shorts of his and in his head every female eye for miles around was following him! They weren’t, of course, but he liked to think they did.”

“And you think one of those ladies did for him?” asked Trayda.

“I dunno who did for him, just that it’s human nature for a man to look after his wife and not let a snurge like Stokesey do stuff to her just because he wants to! And I told him so! Look, Stokesey, I said, it’ll be your downfall, that it will, taking ladies behind the rocks on that bit of beach at any time of day or night and having your wicked way with them… not all their husbands are forgiving creatures, you know… But he took no notice of me and it was that woman who comes from the nudist place down the beach who I saw him with too many times. He took her onto that beach and out of sight behind some rocks, I’m not a spy whatever you might think but the look on both of their faces when they finished what I reckon they were doing told its own story...”

“Annie Hampton’s husband runs the place they call Happy Valley. Is that the woman you mean?” asked Angela.

“If that’s her name then that’s who I mean,” muttered Foxy, “fancy bit of stuff more used to parading herself in the all together than wearing fancy togs for a bit of nooky on the beach. Though I did say to Stokesey that I saw his point. There’s no prettier lady for miles around, present company excepted, of course!”

“Flattery will get you everywhere except near my shorts,” grunted Angela.

“So you reckon that Mr Stokesey might have upset Annie Hampton’s husband?” asked Trayda, frowning. It was all beginning to look too easy, and she never trusted it when that happened.

“Nah, not him, never!” grinned Foxy.

“And what makes you think that?” asked Trayda.

“Well, I don’t know whether you’ve met him or not, but he’s as queer as a clockwork orange,” said Foxy, “just you go and ask Walter Tiny and his mutt Max! He goes that way with the dog once, twice, sometimes three times a day and he takes his binoculars with him so he can spot birds, and I don’t reckon it’s the feathered kind.”

“Is he pointing them at, what’s his name, Mr Hampton, then?” asked Angela, confused.

“No, not at him! But Walter likes the look of a pretty lady especially if she’s in the nuddy, and he can see nothing wrong in looking at them through his glasses if they’ve put themselves on display. And sometimes, he told me, sometimes he sees the Hampton bloke leering at him. Leering, he says, and staring like he was looking at a lover-boy!”

“Good grief,” sighed Trayda, “does anything get more complicated than knowing stuff about human nature? Ever?”

oo0oo

“What did you make of him, then?” asked Angela.

“He’s got things worked out, though,” mused Trayda, “you see, he’s done a stretch for a particularly nasty kind of fraud, separating older folks from their cash, and he was good at it. I remember him all right. I was on the team that finally pinched him and locked him away for it, and his success was down to working out who was vulnerable and who wasn’t. He can judge folks, work out their frailties, see where he might make a few pounds, that sort of thing. So if he says that Mr Hampton would be looking the other way when his wife was on the pull I’d be tempted to believe him.”

“And you’re expected to work all this out just by asking questions and looking around?” asked Angela, “as far as I can see there’s no way you’ll get to the bottom of it unless someone actually confesses.”

“Or makes a mistake,” corrected Trayda, “people do make mistakes, you know. That’s how we nabbed Foxy way back: he made one big mistake. He tried his con, selling fake shares of imaginary businesses to the elderly who fancied making a bit of extra to supplement their pensions, and he tried it on one person too many.”

“He did? Who was that one person?” asked Angela.

“Why, the Chief Constable’s mother! He saw her as a likely candidate, in her eighties and with a walking frame when she was out and about, and made the mistake of judging by what he saw without checking her out before hand. And he ended up behind bars when she sussed him out. Mind you, she’d been in the force in her day too, and knew a thing or two about scumbags like him.”

“So the Naturist camp bloke probably isn’t our man?” asked Angela, “we can rule him out?”

“Never say never until the crook’s in the dock,” Trayda told her, “he might be gay, but he did marry her and you’ve seen her: she’s an attractive woman and I doubt an attractive woman would go for someone who bats for the other side, so to speak. There’s a story there, all right, but is it the sort of story that involves red anger and jealousy leading to murder?”

“I was angry enough when Phil did the dirty on me, but I don’t reckon I could have killed him,” murmured Angela.

“Exactly. Though tell the truth I thought Don might be tempted to batter my brains in when I was caught at it in the cell with randy old Sergeant Crimpson,” sighed Trayda. “It’s hard to fathom what causes one man to break and another, faced with the same problems, snap.”

“So what are we doing next?”

“I’m sweating like a pig in this heat, so I’m going back to the caravan and having a nice shower before dressing in nearly nothing and popping to the pub for more wine,” grinned Trayda, “what about you?”

“Sounds like a good idea,” agreed Angela, “especially the fashion bit!”

© Peter Rogerson 02.04.19

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