Victory Disc

by Andrew Cartmel

  I caught up with Jasper. I’d thought he was heading for a table, but instead it seemed he was bound for the back door of the pub. I said, “What did he mean by that?”

  He stopped and looked at me. “Mean by what?”

  “People with hair.”

  He turned away again, shaking his head. “He didn’t mean anything by it. He’s an idiot. He resents anyone else taking an interest in local history. All he cares about is the money.”

  This was pretty rich, I thought, coming from a man who wouldn’t let us across his threshold until he’d counted our cash. Jasper shepherded us towards the door. “Andy does very well out of my tours,” he said in a low voice, glancing back at the barman. “People pay a premium price to stay in that room.”

  “People stay here?” said Nevada. “I mean, knowing what happened. They deliberately and specifically book that room?”

  “Oh, yes. Frequently young couples. Sometimes honeymoon couples.”

  “Ugh.” Nevada shuddered. “Maybe it’s an S&M thing.”

  Jasper opened the door and we followed him out into the pub garden. He led us to a grubby white plastic table with a small puddle of dirty rainwater at its centre, and sat down. We pulled up chairs and joined him. It was a pleasant, mild day, and the sun was creeping over the concrete wall of the pub and beginning to peer into the garden, a small, grassed area with half a dozen other tables scattered around it. Standing in one corner was an old-fashioned wooden beer barrel with a hand-lettered sign pinned up over it. It was too far away for me to read the sign.

  Jasper rubbed his hands together. “Well, what more can I tell you about the famous Silk Stockings Murder?” It seemed our tour guide had run out of spiel already. We were supposed to ask questions.

  I said, “Did Johnny Thomas do it?”

  “Well, if he didn’t, he did everything possible to make everyone think he did. His every action seemed calculated to ruin any appearance of innocence. His biggest mistake was to try and get rid of the body.”

  “Get rid of it? I thought she was found in their bed.”

  “She was. Eventually.” He set his pint down. “Johnny’s story was that he just woke up and found the girl dead in the bed beside him, and he panicked. He knew he would be blamed for it, he said. So he decided the only thing to do was to try and dispose of her.”

  “Dispose?” said Nevada.

  Jasper nodded. “We are, after all, right beside the sea. He thought if he could just get the body into the water no one would ever know about it. And he might even have been right. But before he could dump her—”

  “Gillian,” said Nevada. “She had a name. Gillian.”

  He nodded, agreeable but a little puzzled, clearly not getting it. “That’s right, Gillian Gadon. He wanted to dump her into the sea. Exactly how well that would have worked is an interesting question. The water is shallow along the beach here in Kingsdown. There are no sudden shelves or areas of deep water easily accessible from the pebble beach. And there’s no jetty that extends out any distance until you get to Deal pier, which is a considerable walk. It’s the better part of two miles. An awfully long way to walk unseen in the middle of the night.”

  “Especially when you’re trying to dispose of a body.”

  “Exactly. Anyway, as I was saying, he didn’t have access to deep water. But perhaps he didn’t need it. The currents around here are complex and unpredictable. The Goodwin Sands is a fascinating and multifarious region, ever-changing yet always dangerous. A palimpsest of shifting sands. I’ve written about them quite extensively, under the title The Phantom Sands. I have several pamphlets available back at the house or downloadable online. Did I mention that I accept PayPal? Anyway, the upshot is, Johnny Thomas might have been able to dispose of the corpse even in these shallow waters, just off the beach. The current might have carried it off. The barrel would have helped in that regard.”

  “The barrel?” I said.

  “Yes. It would have tended to lend buoyancy—”

  “What barrel?” said Nevada.

  Jasper took off his spectacles and polished them with his tie. “Oh, yes, I see. I should have explained. Since Johnny knew the pub very well, having worked here in the summer, he was able to obtain an empty beer barrel from the cellar and put the body—ah, Gillian’s body—into it.” He put the spectacles in his jacket pocket.

  Nevada and I stared at him. I said, “He hid her body in a beer barrel?”

  “Yes. He obtained an empty one from the cellar, brought it into the deserted saloon bar of the pub—it was now about three in the morning and everyone was asleep. He managed to bring the barrel into the bar and bring her body down from the room without waking anyone. He then put the body into the barrel. His reasoning was that he might not be able to get down to the ocean carrying her body without being seen. But if he concealed it inside the barrel—”

  “Back up a minute,” said Nevada. “How did he end up with her dead body in the first place?”

  “As I said, he woke up beside it. Beside her. They had both been drinking heavily in the pub. And then they’d gone up to the room and gone to bed and had sex. A number of times.”

  He seemed unwholesomely fixated on the sex lives of the long-dead.

  Jasper continued. “Afterwards, Johnny fell asleep. And when he woke up, there she was. Dead and cold in the bed beside him, her flawless flesh an unearthly pale hue in the moonlight.” I could tell we were back to the tour spiel.

  I said, “Was there a moon that night?”

  Jasper blinked at me and thought about it. “Yes, there was. Of course there was. A full moon. That was another reason he was so concerned about being seen. If he carried the body down to the beach.”

  “So he put her in the barrel and he was going to roll her down to the sea?”

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  15. BEER BARREL

  Jasper McClew peered at us, his eyes watery without his spectacles. “And as you can imagine, that sort of cold-blooded calculation didn’t help at his trial. Putting the body of his lover into a barrel. It spoke not of a panic-stricken innocent man but rather a shrewd and coolly calculating, guilty one. Anyway, that is the way it seemed as presented by the prosecuting barrister, who incidentally utterly destroyed Johnny Thomas during his cross-examination. Completely shredded him.” He suddenly stopped. “That’s the barrel over there.”

  He pointed at the other side of the pub garden.

  We turned and looked at the old brown beer barrel standing in the corner with the sign pinned over it. Nevada said, “That’s the actual barrel?”

  “Uh, no, but one quite similar. Very similar. Almost identical.” I got up and went over and read the sign. It had a jagged arrow pointing down to a slot in the wooden lid of the barrel and invited cash donations, ‘To the memory of those who suffered in the tragic events of the Silk Stockings Murder’. There was no indication of how any such ensuing funds would be disbursed.

  I was beginning to see what he meant about good old Andy the barman being all about the money.

  I went back and sat with Jasper and Nevada.

  “What happened?” I said. “When he tried to get her to the beach in the barrel? I take it he didn’t make it.”

  “No,” said Jasper. “If he had, no one might ever have learned of his crime.”

  “His crime,” said Nevada. “So you think he did it.”

  Jasper sighed and corrected himself. “The crime, then. No one might ever have learned of the crime. But as fate would have it, he hadn’t gone far, rolling the barrel down the hill, when who should he meet but a policeman.”

  “My god,” said Nevada, apparently envisioning the events of the far-off moonlit night. We had just walked up that same hill. It was easy to imagine the setting. I wondered how Johnny Thomas had managed to stop the barrel rolling away from him. It was steep.

  “Yes, he ran into the local bobby on the beat. Now, as fate would also have it, Johnny actually knew this constable.”

  “From his
summers working in the pub,” I said.

  “That’s right. So the policeman wasn’t as suspicious as he might have been. And when Johnny spun him a story, he was inclined to believe it.”

  Nevada was leaning forward, literally on the edge of her seat. “What story?”

  “He said that the barrel was full of beer that his uncle wanted to donate to Johnny’s band.”

  “The Flare Path Orchestra?” I said.

  “Correct. Johnny told the constable that a lorry had been sent by the squadron and was going to come and pick him up along with the barrel of beer. So he was taking it down to the beach where he was going to be picked up, by some of his mates returning late after a mission. And the constable believed him. So much so that he offered to help Johnny with the barrel.”

  “Help him roll the barrel with the body in it.”

  “Yes. And furthermore, the policeman offered to wait with him until his ride came. To keep him company.”

  “Christ,” whispered Nevada.

  “Johnny naturally refused, said it wasn’t necessary. He had no idea what time the lorry would arrive. There was no point both of them waiting. And so on. He convinced the constable to leave him there with the barrel, and the man was just about to go when someone else arrived. Another policeman.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yes. Only this time it was a military policeman. A so-called Redcap. He wanted to know what was going on. The constable explained to him about the donation of the beer and how Johnny was waiting for a lorry and so on. The military policeman joked about how lucky Johnny’s orchestra was. The constable laughed and Johnny tried to laugh but by now he was ready to have a nervous breakdown.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Nevada. “I’m ready to have a nervous breakdown myself, just hearing about it. What happened?”

  “Both the constable and the military policeman offered to wait with Johnny for the lorry.”

  “The non-existent lorry,” I said.

  “That’s right. The non-existent lorry. Which was never going to come. So, after much waiting around in the cold night, Johnny finally said that it was so late that he was certain that it wasn’t going to come. If it was going to come, it would have been there by now. Something had obviously gone wrong. Some kind of cock-up. This was more than plausible during wartime, so the constable and the military policeman had no reason not to believe him. So, having established this, Johnny said he would take the beer back to the pub.”

  “You mean the body,” said Nevada. “He’d take Gillian’s body in the barrel back to the pub.”

  “Yes. Her body.”

  “And what would he do with it then?”

  “I don’t think he was thinking that far ahead,” said Jasper. “He just wanted to get away from the constable and the military policeman.”

  “And did he?” I said.

  Jasper shook his head. “No. They insisted on helping him roll the barrel back up the hill. All the way to the pub. So Johnny was back where he started, with Gillian Gadon dead and wedged tight in the barrel, said barrel now sitting outside the pub, with two policemen.”

  “What did he do?” said Nevada.

  “Well, he went to get them each a bottle of beer, to say thank you for the help with the barrel. And, he hoped, to get rid of them.”

  “But he didn’t?”

  “No. When he gave them the beer they asked if they could drink it inside. They could hardly be seen drinking on the street when they were both, supposedly, on duty. So he was obliged to let them into the snug bar of the pub. While they sat there drinking their beers he made some excuse and hurried back to the barrel outside. He took Gillian’s body out of it. While the policemen were drinking in the bar he managed to carry it back upstairs and into the room, where he put her corpse back into bed.”

  “Back where he started?” I said.

  “Yes, exactly. Back where he started.”

  “What was he going to do?” said Nevada.

  “I have no idea. I don’t think he did, either. But it doesn’t matter. When he went back downstairs to the bar to say goodnight to the policemen they put the handcuffs on him. They’d looked in the barrel outside, while he had gone to get them beers. They’d taken the lid off and they’d found her. Her contorted body jammed inside, her pale nude body with the stocking that had strangled her knotted around her neck, digging into the flesh. Her purple, contorted face—”

  Nevada interrupted this gruesome word picture. “You mean, they found the body, then they put the lid back on the barrel and let him think…”

  “Yes. They didn’t give any indication that they knew.”

  “All the time he was getting them the beer.”

  “Yes.”

  “And while he dragged the body back upstairs…”

  “And put it into bed, yes. I suppose they were playing cat and mouse with him.”

  “That was really sadistic of them,” said Nevada. I tended to agree. However, Tinkler, when he heard about it all later, floated the suggestion that ‘maybe they just really wanted a beer’.

  “So the burden of evidence was completely against poor Johnny Thomas,” said Jasper. “He never really had a chance, I suppose. His story was that someone must have come into the room while he was asleep and committed the murder. Strangled the woman he loved with one of her own stockings.”

  “Without waking him?” I said.

  Jasper nodded dolefully. “That was the sticking point for the jury, too. Johnny claimed to be drugged, but it was no good.”

  “Drugged?”

  “Yes. There was a half-bottle of whisky waiting for Johnny and Gillian in the room when they retired to bed that fateful night. It had a ribbon tied around it. Apparently a present for them. Of course, spirits were very rare in the war. They were hardly likely to look a gift horse in the mouth. Johnny assumed it was a present from his uncle. He and Gillian both drank the whisky. He later claimed it put them both into a heavy drug-induced slumber, from which Gillian would never awaken.”

  I said, “Was the whisky ever analysed?”

  “No, the bottle had vanished. It was gone when he woke up and found the body.”

  I said, “Presumably removed by the same person who broke in and strangled Gillian.”

  “Presumably, yes. The defence barrister found a barmaid who admitted to putting the whisky in the room. She said a man had given it to her, saying it was a gift, and asking her to leave it for Johnny that night. He had paid her to do so. But this mysterious man was never found, and when the barmaid herself disappeared before testifying in the trial…” He shrugged. “That was it for Johnny Thomas.”

  And that was it for our paid tour, apparently. Jasper McClew finished his pint and rose from the table, bidding us farewell. As he did so he took his spectacles out of the pocket of his jacket and shook them open before putting them on. It was an oddly familiar gesture and suddenly I knew where I’d seen him before.

  He was the man who had been hanging around outside Joan Honeyland’s mews in Soho. I hardly had time to register this when Tinkler came barging into the pub garden, followed by Clean Head. They had come out through the door as Jasper went in. They sat down at the table with us. “We left the car parked down by the beach,” said Clean Head. “I made city boy here walk up the hill.”

  “It was both invigorating and terrifying,” said Tinkler.

  “So you managed to find us,” said Nevada. “Despite the plethora of pubs in the locale. Did you know that this part of Kent has more pubs per capita than anywhere else in the UK?”

  “Oh, we didn’t have any problems on that score,” said Clean Head. “We went into that petrol station at the bottom of the hill to fill up and, before I could say a word, the man said, ‘Go up there, turn right, follow the hill, first left, and then you’ll be right there.’”

  I noticed her taxi driver’s ability to repeat directions with exactitude.

  “Right where?”

  “The Feathers. This pub. He’d directed me to
where you were waiting.”

  “That was nice of him,” said Nevada. “But how did he know that we were together? That you were with us?”

  “It’s a tiny village,” said Tinkler. “It’s inhabited by a handful of inbred, banjo-strumming mutants.”

  “You have to get over this negative obsession of yours, Tinkler,” said Nevada. “I think it’s a perfectly lovely place.”

  “Anyway, the point is, they don’t see many strangers around here.” This last was uttered by Tinkler in a sinister and slightly moronic rural accent of no particular locale. “So of course they knew we had to be with you. The other strangers from the place called London.”

  Superficially this made sense. But only superficially. I said, “But how did they know we were going to this particular pub?”

  “Good point,” said Nevada.

  Tinkler sighed. “Because they talk to each other. They gossip. That’s all there is to do down here,” he said. “Strum banjos and gossip.”

  I looked at him, then at Clean Head, beautiful and elegant with her smooth, shaved scalp gleaming. I got up from the table and went into the pub. Andy the barman was using a damp cloth to carefully wipe the dust off the bottle of wine that we’d ordered. He looked at me as I came in and set it aside.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “but what did you mean earlier, when you said it was nice to see someone with hair?”

  “Oh, that? I just meant a lot of the people who come here for the Silk Stockings Murder tour, a lot of them, maybe even most of them, are skinheads. Like your friend outside.” He glanced out the window at the garden, where Clean Head was sitting, laughing with the others. “Actually, not like her. They’re usually a whiter shade of pale, if you know what I mean. Bovver boots, Fred Perry shirts, the Union Jack very much in evidence. All that lot.”