by Lynne Truss
Inspector Steine watches the antics of the penguins with pleasure. He does still worry a little about appearing in public when there is a lunatic at large, but he also loves the fact that this crossing will (according to Miss Lennon) be associated with his name for ever.
‘You can remove the tarpaulin now,’ she says. Glancing behind her, she sees in the crowd Miss Sibert and Geoffrey Chaucer, who appear – like everyone else – to be half bemused by the proceedings and half impatient to cross the road. Glancing up at the mighty new Camel Clock on the front of Gosling’s, she sees the faces of Adelaide Vine and Mister Harold at an adjacent window. Below them, sheltering under the smaller marquee, keeping their onions dry, are four of Terry’s top men in French outfits, pretending not to know her.
The tarpaulin is pulled back, and as the spotless black-and-white stripes are revealed, there is an ‘Oooh’ of appreciation from the crowd – which is generous of them, as they have seen many zebra crossings before. An interesting faraway expression appears on Geoffrey Chaucer’s face. Miss Sibert wordlessly hands him the cricket bag and – quite unconsciously – he reaches inside.
Inspector Steine steps forward, taking a few folded pages of a speech from his tunic pocket. ‘What’s the time? Five minutes to go? I’ll start,’ he says. ‘Now, can everyone hear me?’ he calls.
And then he sees, on the opposite side of the road, lurking half-behind the small marquee with the onion-sellers in it, a reporter in a white coat and a brown hat.
‘My nemesis!’ he gasps.
Glancing the other way, he sees Constable Jenkins, a look of fury on his face.
‘Jenkins!’ he whimpers.
Inside the shop, at four minutes to twelve, it is Dorothy who first raises the alarm.
‘Mister Harold, sir! Mister Harold, sir! Money! Something’s happened to the money!’
Money? thinks Mister Harold. How can anything go wrong with money? But then he turns to look, and sees a sight that fills him with total horror. Large white five-pound notes are shooting out of the pneumatic tubes embedded in the walls. And it’s worse than that. As they flutter down, excited customers – customers! – are not only snatching them out of the air, they are calling to their friends to do it too.
‘What’s happening?’ he says. ‘Let go of that money! Yes, you, madam! That’s mine!’
He has never felt such a sense of panic in his life. ‘Miss Vine? Miss Vine, there’s something wrong!’
He rushes to the carpet department to retrieve a note from the hands of an elderly man who refuses to let go, and in the struggle, the elderly man trips over a pile of Turkish rugs and knocks his head on the floor.
Adelaide’s eyes widen. This is a trick! she thinks. Who’s doing this? She wants to stay and guard the clock, but what choice does she have? The caps are off all the tubes, and more money is exploding out of them, causing an enormous diversion. ‘Cap those tubes!’ she calls out to the staff on the shop-floor, but the caps are nowhere to be found, and still the five-pound notes keep coming.
‘You can’t go the whole way in first gear, Twitten.’
‘This isn’t a driving lesson, sir. This is bally life or death!’
‘I appreciate that, lad, because you keep saying it, but why does that stop you from changing up?’
‘Well, to be frank, sir, I’m in too much of a state to remember how to do it.’
They have been three times round the area of town called The Level, with Twitten trying to work out a route onto the London Road avoiding the roadblocks. Much of this has involved illegally driving in the wrong lane, with two wheels on the pavement, or between stationary cars with barely sufficient clearance.
‘May I make one observation, Twitten? And would you please listen?’
‘All right, sir. But time is of the essence.’
‘You have a tendency to steer towards whatever catches your eye, so please focus only on the carriageway ahead.’
‘I don’t understand, sir.’
‘So, for example, don’t look at that bollard.’
‘What bollard?’ The car swerves to the right immediately.
‘You see, now we’re heading straight for the bollard.’
‘Gosh, I see what you mean, sir.’ Baines grabs the wheel, to save the car from smacking into the bollard head-on. ‘Sorry, sir! Gosh, that was close!’
There is pandemonium on the second floor of Gosling’s. No one is looking out of the window any more: they are focusing all their attention on catching free money, and fighting off the staff who attempt to recover it. Mister Harold has forgotten his Camel Clock and is trying to block one of the tubes, using his own jacket. Meanwhile Adelaide makes a bad decision. She jumps into the lift and instructs Jimmy the Gimp, ‘Take me to the basement at once!’
Jimmy tips his hat and repeats, ‘Yes, miss. Basement, miss. I can do that, miss, I’m sure.’ Then – very slowly – he shuts each of the two metal concertina doors with a ‘clang’.
‘Come on!’ she says.
‘Pardon, miss?’
‘I said, come on!’
‘Yes, miss.’ He looks at the lift control as if he’s never seen it before, muttering ‘Basement, basement, basement’, and then with a big shrug – as if to say ‘You can only die once’ – he shoves the control forward with such inappropriate force that the lift plummets down two storeys.
‘What are you doing?’ shrieks Adelaide, in terror, her feet lifting off the floor.
‘Sorry, miss,’ he says. He corrects his mistake by pulling the control back again, and the lift jerks to a standstill. They both land heavily.
‘Why did you do that?’ she pants, furious.
He shrugs. ‘I don’t know, miss. But looking at the evidence, I suppose I must have received inadequate training.’
‘Let me out at once.’
‘Well, I don’t think I can, miss.’ He indicates their position, stuck between two floors. When he tentatively pushes the control, nothing happens. And together they are both distracted anyway by a combination of noises – the clock starting to chime, then a bang, perhaps? A lot of screaming? A car’s brakes? It is infuriatingly difficult to make out.
Just a few minutes ago, Adelaide had been in the perfect spot to watch a brilliant plan unfold, but now she is stuck in this lift with an idiot and the chance of a lifetime has gone.
The person who sees everything is Inspector Steine, but – true to form – he doesn’t understand any of it. All he knows is that a few seconds before twelve o’clock Miss Lennon signals to the onion-sellers on the Gosling’s side to ready themselves, then she smiles at Steine and joins him on the crossing. ‘This is it,’ she says to him. A penguin tries to waddle across, but Steine orders it to go back and, astonishingly, it obeys.
As the clock commences its bing-bong chimes in advance of striking the hour, everyone looks up and sees that, beyond the clock, inside the shop, people appear to be rioting, which is odd. Children holding little chequered flags continue to wave them, though. Everyone loves a flag.
‘What’s happening?’ mutters Miss Lennon.
Miss Sibert is similarly unnerved. ‘Scheisse,’ she mutters.
But Geoffrey Chaucer is on track. He slips the axe out of the cricket bag and looks with approval at the sharpened blade.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Steine begins, ‘it gives me great pleasure to open this zebra crossing. In the past few weeks a number of accidents have occurred here, but I promise you—’
He stops. On the blocked road there is a police car coming towards them, not at great speed thanks to being in (straining) first gear, but with every appearance of purpose.
Miss Lennon takes her cue. The clock is about to chime.
‘Inspector Steine!’ she gasps. ‘Leave me alone, leave me alone!’
‘What?’ says Steine. ‘I didn’t touch you, Miss Lennon.’
‘Help, help!’ she calls.
Chaucer grips the axe-handle tighter and steps forward. In his mind are explosions of scarlet on a
black-and-white background – on his mother’s dress, on the Deco walls, on the tiled floor. He sees the black-and-white checks trimming the policemen’s uniforms; he sees chess pieces scattered.
The clock reaches the end of its bing-bong-bing-bongs, and then – when everyone is happily looking up at it – it wobbles.
‘Good God,’ says Steine. ‘That’s an enormous clock. Surely it won’t … ?’
But it does. It is quite front-heavy, given all those ornamental pyramids, palm trees and such. Given a well-judged shove from inside by Joan and Dorothy in unison, it topples from its position and in less than a second has landed with mighty force on the marquee beneath, crushing all four of the faux French onion-sellers.
‘Was that supposed to happen, Miss Lennon?’ says Steine, confused. ‘Weren’t those people guests in our country?’
But Miss Lennon isn’t there to answer him. She has run away into the screaming crowd, despite all attempts by a rogue penguin to trip her up.
Chaucer looks down at the axe in his hand, and understands everything. ‘You set me up!’ he cries. He wants to strangle Miss Sibert with his bare hands, but clever Carlotta has likewise made herself scarce. Following suit, he darts into the dispersing and hysterical crowd.
In the approaching car, Twitten can see the scene unfolding, but can’t make the car go any faster (his foot is weary from holding the pedal to the floor). So he decides he must take the risk. He depresses the clutch and – praying – wiggles the gearstick to locate second gear.
‘Oh, thank God,’ says Baines, as the car finally picks up speed.
From his position still in the middle of the crossing, Steine sees that, fighting his way against the fleeing crowd, is Constable Jenkins, flushed red with annoyance. And as if to make matters even worse …
‘Inspector Steine?’
He looks round. It is Clive Hoskisson.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ he says. ‘Now? Can’t you see I’m in the middle of something?’
‘I know it all,’ says Hoskisson. ‘I know you shot Terence Chambers while not even knowing who he was. I’ve got you, Steine. You’re going down.’
Steine throws up his hands. Is all this really happening? Dead Frenchmen, a man with an axe, and on top of everything else, a car appears to be driving straight towards him (inside which, unbeknown to him, Baines is saying ‘You’re doing it again!’ and trying to grab the wheel).
As it happens, Twitten is so aghast to see Hoskisson on the crossing that he is steering the car directly at him. Tragically, he has chosen the wrong person to target, because Hoskisson – as we already know – is a man who prides himself on always standing his ground.
‘Brake, lad!’ calls Baines.
‘Oh, yes,’ says Twitten. ‘Of course.’ And he looks down at his feet to select the right pedal.
‘Sir, I have to get you off this crossing,’ says Jenkins, taking Steine by the arm. ‘There are loose penguins and everything. And there seems to be a full-scale riot in that shop.’ But Steine shakes his arm free; he is irritated by Hoskisson’s behaviour. ‘Why don’t you get out of the way, you stupid man?’ Steine yells. ‘Can’t you see the car? Oh, my God, it’s skidding!’
And then the inspector does something entirely out of character. Admittedly, the car in question is not approaching at any great speed; and admittedly, the main thought in Steine’s head is the petulant, I will not be told what to do by Constable Jenkins! But it is heroic nevertheless in a slow-motion kind of way. Because at the last second, the exasperated Steine throws himself bodily at Hoskisson and knocks him out of the path of Twitten’s car, which screeches and slews to a halt a few yards further down the road, Baines having grabbed the wheel and turned it sharply.
Twitten runs back in the rain to where the two men are still in a muddled heap of limbs on the road.
‘Sir … are you all right, sir?’ he pants. ‘Oh, thank goodness. Thank flipping goodness.’
‘Calm down, Twitten,’ says Steine. ‘Not much harm done. I mean, apart from … ’ He glances towards the flattened marquee with the clock on top, from which a poignant smell of crushed onions is wafting. ‘Are you all right, Hoskisson?’
But the reporter can’t bring himself to speak. His life has just been saved by the man he was preparing to denounce as an idiot and a coward.
‘I got here as fast as I could, sir,’ explained Twitten, ‘when I realised Miss Lennon had plotted to kill you using the crossing and the clock and the maniac and the penguins and everything, but to be honest I can’t really drive, although I did just manage to find second gear all by myself so possibly I’m improving!’
Eleven
At a quarter-past twelve, making her way grimly through the rainy streets, following a figure hurrying along in a turquoise coat and carrying a lemon-coloured handbag, Mrs Groynes fingered the gun in her pocket.
It was satisfying to see Miss So-Called Adelaide So-Called Vine fleeing the scene at Gosling’s. All her plans had just ended in humiliating failure: Inspector Steine was still alive; her co-conspirators had fled; a tall man with an unused sharpened axe was at large in the town; and, last but not least, four top members of the Chambers gang had died a deeply embarrassing death, crushed by more than eight stone of orientalist metalwork.
Mrs Groynes had witnessed it all, of course. While events in the London Road unfolded, she had been sheltering in the main Gosling’s doorway with gang member Sid the Doorman and enjoying the results of her handiwork. Their position was so close to the point of impact that when the clock hit the ground, they both jumped in the air, gasping, and then laughed reflexively, holding each other up.
‘Blimey, boss,’ panted Sid. ‘Couldn’t you just have stuffed rags in it or something? There are easier ways to stop a clock than pushing it off a ruddy ledge.’
To any disinterested onlooker, their behaviour was unusual: these two people chatting light-heartedly in a doorway, while a hysterical crowd streamed past them.
‘Now, don’t be too disappointed, Sid, but I expect this has kiboshed the Christmas Job. I mean, we can hardly use the tubes again and I’ve told Denise to scarper at once anyway – ooh!’ At this point, Twitten’s car captured her attention, as it skidded past where she was standing and narrowly missed Inspector Steine and the man in the white coat on the crossing. ‘Ooh, good gawd, that was a near thing,’ she said, clutching her chest. The noise of the crowd made it necessary to raise her voice. ‘I was saying, we can hardly use the tubes again, can we?’ she shouted. ‘But don’t you make a move just yet, Sid. Don’t go back to your flopping, it’s too dangerous. You hold fast, dear. We’ll wait and see.’
‘How long can Jimmy keep that woman in the lift?’ yelled Sid.
‘Pardon?’
‘The woman in the lift!’
Mrs Groynes nodded to indicate she had heard. ‘I told him to let her out at ten-past.’
‘When?’
‘What time is it now?’
He produced a pocket watch and wiped off the rain that fell on it. ‘Ten-past!’ he yelled.
‘Right. Good timing. There she goes!’
And now here Mrs Groynes was, following Adelaide Vine towards the centre of Brighton. In a way she felt sympathy for the girl. The plan to kill Steine on the zebra crossing was, admittedly, overambitious, but still, it had very, very nearly come off. Mrs Groynes had put two and two together only yesterday morning, when she had let herself into Steine’s house to read all the Broadmoor documents regarding Chaucer’s case.
About fifty yards ahead, Adelaide was zigzagging west and north through the grid of minor roads in the North Laine quarter of the town. She walked very purposefully – never looking back; never checking to see if she was being followed. This was fortunate for her pursuer, but also a slight cause for concern. This young woman had just escaped a débâcle. Shouldn’t she be exhibiting at least a smidgen of anxiety about what was happening behind her? But Adelaide forged up Gloucester Street and then turned left into Kensington Gardens wi
thout once glancing back. Which was why Mrs Groynes began, at last, to smell a rat.
‘That’s bleeding odd, not looking back like that,’ she said to herself. And then it struck her. Unless she knows who’s behind.
Halfway along Kensington Gardens, Mrs Groynes made a decision. She stopped and turned … and there he was, just a few yards back, flanked by two other men wearing equally serious expressions. If it had been a film, the soundtrack would have gone, ‘Dum, dum, DUMMMM’. Deep down, she had suspected it all along, but it still broke her heart to find it was true.
‘Cecil,’ she said, with a sigh of resignation. Rain that had collected on her horrible plastic rain-bonnet poured down onto her back as she looked up at the attractive face of her long-time favourite henchperson – those dark eyes; that handsome square jaw. Conflicting emotions flooded her: relief, fear, physical attraction. Without the bunnies, in a long grey raincoat and leather gloves, he stood straight and tall, a strikingly virile figure.
‘Hello, Palmeira,’ he said.
One of the other men held out his hand for her gun. It was Constable Jenkins. ‘I’ll take that weapon, madam,’ he said, and, meekly, she took it from her pocket and gave it to him. The other man, who had the decency to look embarrassed, was Stanley-Knife Stanley.
‘Oh, Stan!’ she remonstrated. ‘What did I ever do to deserve this from you?’
Cecil took her by the arm, and they walked on, this small middle-aged woman in her ghastly concertina rain-hat flanked by one big man in a homburg (Cecil), another in a tweedy flat cap (Stanley) and one in a policeman’s helmet (Constable Jenkins). Without the presence of a policeman, passers-by might have guessed she was in peril. But as it was, they didn’t.
‘This your gang, then, is it?’ she said, attempting conversation. ‘These your boys? Well, I knew the Vine girl couldn’t have come up with all this on her own.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
