THE SPANISH WAITER: THREE

An even that occurred after Ivan's release from prison

AUTUMN 2011

Retired Inspector Jimmy Hewitt was caressing his pint of best bitter in the Gnome and Fairy where he was often to be found in the evening if there was nothing that pleased him on the television. He’d been married in the distant reaches of his life, but Mrs Hewitt had tired of the irregular hours kept by a man she had started loving when they were younger and soon found herself drifting into the arms of a milkman when she wearied of sitting in the house on her own for night after night and needed the comfort of a man’s arms around her.

And here was that Inspector, retired, lonely except for the pint he cherished and with nobody to talk to. He’d been a copper and the Gnome and Fairy was no place for the likes of him. He only went there because every other pub he might have called his local was simply not local enough. His legs threatened to give out if he tried to walk one step further than he had to.

He sighed to himself, stared moodily at his almost empty pint glass and wondered whether he might be able to afford a third. Times were hard since the missus had left him twelve years ago, around the time when he’d been searching for the last mortal remains of, what was his name? The bully of a moron who the teacher from the next street had somehow done away with. Bonehead they called the dead man and from what he’d gathered that name described him perfectly. But even if boneheads got murdered justice had to be done. He’d been firm about that. Someone had to pay the price.

Then a coincidence entered the evening.

“A penny for them,” said a voice in his ear, and he actually physically jumped.

He looked up and thought maybe he recognised the woman then decided he might have once upon a time, then he knew that he had never met her before. But she had a kind of determined look about her face.

So, “Do I know you?” he asked.

“Probably not,” she told him with the sort of smile that made his heart want to leap about in his chest. After all, he’d not been smiled at like that by a woman since the Mrs had done a bunk. “But I know you,” she added, “you’re Inspector Jimmy Hewitt, and I wanted a word with you if I may?”

“So who are you?” he grunted, making sure she noticed just how empty his glass was by trying to suck the last drop out of it.

“Maybe if I bought you a beer?” she suggested, “You can call me Geraldine if you like. Your glass seems to be on the empty side and you look to be a thirsty man!”

He sat upright suddenly as if what she had said had triggered a memory. Then he tried to penetrate her gaze, but his own eyes were less capable of focusing what he saw as a

“Not Geraldine Bonny?” he asked, “a sergeant in the police force? A brave woman who got in the way of a speeding bullet?”

“You’ve heard of me, then?” she asked. He looked at her face, surprised that she was in the same pub as him because few women ever entered it, not that it was exclusively a male domain. Maybe she recognised him? After all, he’d had a long and somewhat successful career, but it was in the past.

“Of course I have,” she said, “and I wanted to know something. Tell me about Ivan Maybe?”

“The teacher who murdered a neighbour? Not much to tell, I’m afraid. We couldn’t find the neighbour, and his body was never found. He was a scumbag who would never have been abducted because not a soul on this planet would want to do such a thing, so Ivan Maybe murdered him.”

“Oh dear,” sighed Geraldine Bonny, “and it never crossed your mind that you got it wrong?”

“I never got things wrong,” growled the retired Inspector, “though it was an odd case, all right. There was forensics or I might well have looked another way. But Maybe’s finger prints were all over the place where the deceased was last seen, in his untidy and somewhat disreputable garage. He even had some knocked-off cigarettes in a cupboard! And Maybe’s prints were on the car, on the doors, everywhere. And there was blood. Pity it wasn’t Carter’s but it did belong to Maybe. So he was guilty and I put him away.”

“Twelve years,” Geraldine told him, “and he’s out and about now, still proclaiming his innocence.”

“Anyway, what’s it got to do with you, sergeant?” demanded Jimmy Hewitt.

“Not sergeant any more,” sighed Geraldine, “the bullet that you alluded to was enough to make me see sense. So I left the job and sort of joined the probation service, and Ivan Maybe is one of my cases. Or friends. You might say he’s one of my friends. He makes me feel all gooey when we’re in bed together, though I didn’t say that. And one thing I’m absolutely sure of is he’s never killed anyone. So I thought I’d get your take on his guilt.”

“A court of law found him guilty!” snapped the Inspector, “so guilty he was!”

“And to think I was going to buy you yet another pint,” sighed Geraldine, “but I won’t because you’ve got a closed mind and don’t deserve one. He was innocent, there was no body, the vanished Mr Carter might just have done that: vanished all on his own. Gone somewhere else or maybe climbed a mountain and fallen down the other side. He might even have adopted a disguise and mixed with the crowds just about anywhere, maybe the Glastonbury festival if that was his kind of scene. And you didn’t look beyond a slanging match in which Mr Carter showed all the anger and did all the slanging!”

“Ivan Maybe was guilty. End of story!” snapped Jimmy Hewitt. “Now if you’ll excuse me, ex-sergeant, I like to choose my own company and I don’t like yours, so I’ll buy my own beer from now on!”

“Please yourself,” she replied, frowning, “and I only hope you sleep at night with Ivan’s twelve years on your conscience. I wouldn’t be able to.”

And she stood up and walked out of the Gnome and Fairy leaving Inspector Jimmy Hewitt in a whirlpool of doubt.

What if he had been wrong? After all, he’d been close to retiring and looked upon the disappearance of Gaddy Carter and the conviction of Ivan Maybe as a sort of triumphant swansong, ann exultant glory to show for his years of thankless dedication.

But had ignorant Carter just disappeared? And was the convicted Maybe as innocent as a new born babe like he’d always claimed? And if he was, might he be looking for someone to blame for his twelve years behind bars? Because he’d never expressed regret for his crime, which is why he’d never been offered any remission.

And had the judge suspected something was wrong? He’d always thought the sentence was a miserable one for murder.

He finished the drink that the woman probation officer had bought him at the start of their conversation, and bought himself another one. To calm his nerves, he told himself, to prove that he was right.

Because wasn’t he always?

© Peter Rogerson 23.10.22

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