by Ripley, Mike
‘I see,’ I said, wondering how to get out of this. ‘Fascinating.’
‘Yes, it is. Or I find it so.’ He tried to reconnect the letter-opener chain to the desk but failed. He wrapped the dangling chain around it and placed it on top of the desk.
‘Yes indeed. Brewery history is a fascinating subject.’
He looked around for somewhere to put the bank statement, then screwed it into a ball and stuffed it into the pocket of his coat.
‘It’s about time for my daily tour,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘Beatrice here can hold the fort. Have you ever been round a brewery, Mr Angel?’
‘No, I never have,’ I said, brightening and totally forgetting to add: Not legally.
4
I don’t know how tall the average Victorian brewery architect was, but he was either six inches shorter than Murdo or he had a warped sense of humour. On the climb up the brewery there were no less than eight doorways and archways which I could get through with ease, but for which Murdo should have ducked. Should have, but didn’t. Hit every one with his forehead. Got the lot.
But it didn’t stop him talking and the second thing I learned about Victorian Tower breweries was that when they said Tower, they meant it and that involved climbing narrow staircases until we reached the Malt Store on the top floor.
The view through two leaded windows which wouldn’t have looked out of place in a church was spectacular if you liked dark grey seascapes and weren’t worried about the fact that the seagulls were flying below you. The state I was in, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see some of them wearing oxygen masks.
‘So here we are, at the top of the Tower system and these are the three sorts of malt we use: a basic pale ale, a crystal and a chocolate.’
Murdo spun around on his heels, pointing at a platoon of dumpy sacks slumped against the walls. He wasn’t even out of breath. He might be concussed but he wasn’t out of breath.
‘Let me get this right,’ I wheezed. ‘You drag the heaviest thing you use all the way right up to the top here?’
‘We use pulleys and winches of course,’ he said, ‘and if you want to be picky, the water we use is actually the heaviest ingredient.’
‘And that,’ I pointed a finger down the spiral staircase I had struggled up, ‘is way down there under the ground, right?’
‘Well . . . yes,’ he pondered and I got the feeling that normal brewery tours didn’t give him this much trouble, ‘but the beauty of the Tower system is that from here on gravity takes over.’
He skipped over to an ancient red metal box which looked like a giant coffee grinder – and I wasn’t far wrong.
‘This is our mill, our original mill.’
He said it with pride. I wondered if Beatrice down on the switchboard was an original fixture too.
‘Where we grind the malt into a fine powder which we call grist.’
He paused for dramatic effect.
‘As in . . .’
‘. . . grist to the mill,’ I completed.
‘Why, yes.’ He seemed genuinely crestfallen, then he recovered. ‘The grist goes down to the floor below where we mash it with hot water, which we call liquor for some reason. Don’t ask me why.’
What did they call thirst?
‘After mashing we boil with hops – good Kentish hops, of course, we use no other – which gives the beer its bitterness.’
‘So there’s beer one floor down?’ I asked.
‘Sort of. It’s still green beer in a sense, not that I mean organic or anything. Though it probably is as we use only natural ingredients and we try and avoid pesticides and suchlike.’
He tried to describe ‘organic’ with his long, thin hands. I’d never seen anybody do that before. Well, not anyone who actually knew what it meant.
‘But there’s no alcohol in the beer yet. We call it wort, which I’m told is a good old Anglo-Saxon word.’
I know another, I said to myself.
‘Hopped wort to be accurate,’ he went on, ‘which is cooled and run into fermentation tanks and then we add yeast and the wort ferments happily for a few days then we let it condition itself and then we transfer it through pipes across the yard to the racking lines where it goes into casks or kegs or bottles. But I’ll show you all this.’
I had drifted away and was looking out of the window down into the yard, where Beatrice was click-clacking in her high heels towards the door marked ‘Sampling Cellar’. Two men in brown brewery logo overalls were heading for the same place from a different angle. The ancient security guard came out of his gatehouse, rattled the gates to make sure they were locked and marched that way too.
‘So you don’t actually get to sample the stuff except way down there?’ I had my nose virtually pressed against the window by now and found myself eyeball to glassy eyeball with a passing seagull. He seemed to be smirking at me.
‘That’s right. And all our employees are expected to have at least three halves a day and fill in a sheet of tasting notes so that we can make sure our Head Brewer is keeping his hand in.’
He flapped a hand at the stairway. ‘Shall we hurry along?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘ Let’s hurry.’
Thirty-eight minutes so far and still not a drop.
We eventually made it down to the brewery yard. By this time – one hour and nine minutes after crossing the threshold, but who was counting? – I was an expert on brewing. I could spot a ‘rocky head’ on a fermentation vessel at fifty feet and I could appreciate the aromatic properties of hops. (The trick was not just to sniff them, but rub them between the balls of your thumbs to release the full aroma. What they don’t tell you is that way the aroma stays on your hands for days.)
Across the yard someone in the Sampling Cellar had turned on a light, giving its leaded windows a warm, welcoming, orange glow like a church in autumn. I thought I could hear the tinkle of happy laughter and I strode out towards the sound.
‘I see you take your undercover work seriously,’ Murdo Seton said behind me.
‘What?’ I stopped and turned.
He was standing admiring Armstrong, reaching out a hand, stroking a wheel arch.
‘Miss Blugden said you were one of the best undercover operatives they used and I can see why now. No one would suspect a cab driver.’
I would, I thought, but said:
‘It’s delicensed of course, but it is ideal for London. Never any problem parking and people usually get out of your way, even buses. Did Veronica really say that?’
He had his hand on the driver’s door handle now.
‘Oh yes, she did. She said undercover infiltration was the second biggest segment of their business after security and risk assessment.’
Brilliant. After all this time and within fifty feet of the Sampling Cellar, he decides to talk shop.
‘I’ve never driven one of these,’ he said dreamily. ‘What’s on the clock?’
‘130,000 miles, or that’s what it says. I wouldn’t put money on it being accurate.’ I looked at the battered Citroën Safari next to Armstrong, noting the three-inch fringe of rust around the lower bodywork. ‘I see you go for the classic cars yourself.’
‘What? This thing?’ He was genuinely amazed. ‘This is just the old family run-around I inherited from my father. One of the doors doesn’t open any more and I put my foot through the floor last week but she still starts up every morning. I really ought to take the old warhorse in for an overhaul. Marvellous car: one of the few you can get skis inside. Don’t see many of them on the road these days, though.’
‘They haven’t made them for about thirty years,’ I said. ‘You don’t even see them in France much.’
‘Really? No wonder the garage charges me so much for spares, but I like the old Safari. Everyone round here knows it and when they see it coming they know it’s me.’
I’ll bet they do – see you coming, that is.
‘You should take it across to France for servicing,’ I said seriously. �
��You’d find it cheaper and you are near enough, for heaven’s sake.’
‘Cheaper, you say?’ He was thinking about it.
‘Much. And you could fill up with cheap beer on the way back,’ I added casually. ‘You could get a fair few cases in the back of that thing.’
He stared at the Citroën as if estimating its cubic capacity and I waited for it to sink in. I had fed him the words ‘France’ and ‘cheap beer’ virtually in the same sentence. Surely the cartoon light bulb above his head would flash on sooner or later.
It did.
‘Funny you should mention that, because that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’
He looked over my shoulder – over my head actually – and noticed the Sampling Cellars as if for the very first time.
‘Shall we do it over a drink?’
One hour and twenty-two minutes.
Bingo.
I warmed to young Murdo as the afternoon wore on, though to be honest after my second pint of Triple S (Seagrave’s Seaside Special) I would have struck up a conversation with a tax inspector or hugged a traffic warden.
Murdo’s problem – if he had a problem – was that he had been a gangling youth who had left boarding school to become a gangling undergraduate at Cambridge and then had strolled, bashing his head all the way, into the family business. Along the way, he simply hadn’t got out much.
He had probably looked forty-two since he was eighteen, may even have practised at it, but he was, he said, only twenty-seven, which was a little bit sad. He had absolutely no idea why I went into a fit of giggles and spluttered into my beer when he said, airily:
‘It was only four years ago, when I came down from Cambridge, and I was wondering what sort of a career to follow . . .’
For goodness’ sake, I wanted to scream, your dad owns a brewery!
Where was the problem?
Given that he seemed to have inherited an extra clumsy gene, I could understand why the family firm might not have wanted him working too closely with hot liquids, dangerous machinery or substances open to abuse, such as alcohol. (I didn’t think it wise to tell him that hops were related to cannabis. Information overload can be an ugly thing.) So a career in the brewery was not actually a foregone conclusion. It had, however, given him a summer vacation job during his years as a student – starting with mucking out the stables and moving up to supervising the bottling lines – so, when he finished his degree, it seemed sensible to ‘help out’ in the brewery until he found his vocation.
Surprise, surprise, he was made an Area Manager within a year; Tied-Trade Director (looking after the company’s own pubs) within two; and a member of the Board six months ago. And none of this had anything to do with him being called Seton?
‘No, not really. I don’t think so,’ he had said seriously.
I had been tempted to ask how many people on the Board were not called Seton, but then he was behind the bar pulling the drinks.
The Sampling Cellar was not actually a cellar, it was a miniature pub with an in-built advantage: no customers. Or, at least, no paying customers as there were no cash registers. It had scrubbed wooden tables and chairs, a dart board, a bar billiards table, even a shove-ha’penny board, and a long bar with two pumps of each of the brewery’s beers making sixteen handpulls in all.
Murdo explained that one pump of each beer was the latest brew whilst the second would be the same beer but an earlier batch, so the trick was to guess which was one day old and which was up to thirteen days. The only person who could tell for sure, especially after the first three samples, was the Head Brewer. He, I was told in a whisper, was the short, bearded man in a white coat, smoking a pipe at a table by himself with eight glasses and a clipboard.
Beatrice, the gatekeeper, the draymen and a couple of other staff drifted off after Murdo and I entered and when only the Head Brewer was left, minding his own business, Murdo suggested we see if they had left us any lunch. I was grateful on the basis that any more of this professional sampling on an empty stomach and I would be in no fit state to get Armstrong out of the brewery yard let alone back to London.
At the end of the bar was a glass-fronted electric hot cabinet in which was a large joint of roasted beef, half a dozen soft bread rolls and a carving knife which could have doubled as a pirate sword.
‘Help yourself,’ said Murdo. ‘We have a different roast on every day.’
‘You don’t employ many vegetarians, then?’ I asked cheerfully, making myself a sandwich.
‘We have salmon on Fridays,’ he said hesitantly.
‘Those are Catholics, not vegetarians.’
He waited a good half-minute before he laughed.
‘Oh yes, very good. Miss Rudgard told us you were. . . . Now, what was the expression she used?’
‘A chopsy little git?’ I offered.
‘Yes!’ He was wide-eyed. ‘That was exactly it.’
‘Shot in the dark,’ I said modestly, munching on an inch-thick slice of beef and surveying fourteen beers as yet untried. Life suddenly seemed good.
‘Your glass is empty,’ Murdo said, not for the first time. ‘Let me try you with something else.’
He took my glass without much of a fight and marched around behind the bar, selecting and grasping a pump handle like he was sizing up an opponent at Olympic arm-wrestling.
‘Have you worked for the Misses Rudgard and Blugden for long?’ he asked as he pulled.
‘I’ve never heard them referred to as that before. Thanks.’ I took a full glass from his hand. The pump he had used had a brightly painted bird on it, a swan or something. Then the words ‘Seagull Special Bitter’ came into focus. ‘You not having one?’
‘I’m taking it easy. I have to go up to town tonight to a brewers’ dinner. Very boring. Tell me about the R&B agency.’
‘Well, you hired ‘em.’ I toasted him with my glass. ‘And they hired me, so wouldn’t it be better if you told me what exactly you want me to do?’
Murdo flipped his eyebrows then jerked his head and I automatically looked behind me, but there was only the old Head Brewer sitting in the corner sipping beer.
‘Later,’ Murdo mouthed without a sound, so I went along with it. After all, he was buying.
‘Well, I’m only a freelance, you understand. A specialist, working on a job-to-job basis. The agency’s main business is security systems.’
‘Yes, I know,’ he said, leaning over the bar and resting his elbows on it. He was so long his hands jutted out way over the edge. ‘What’s Miss Rudgard’s speciality?’
Stella’s speciality? Oh God, could I get into trouble here.
‘I think she’s the brains of the outfit, the business brains that is. Veronica is more the muscles in the partnership.’
‘Sort of good cop, bad cop, eh? She jolly well frightened me.’
I nodded in agreement as I sipped my beer. Then I realised he was talking about Veronica and I was thinking about Stella.
‘Do you know her well?’ Murdo asked quietly.
I must have been going down with the ‘flu or something because I only just realised that Murdo was sniffing around the subject personally, not professionally.
‘We don’t exactly move in the same social circles,’ I said carefully, ‘and of course she doesn’t get involved in my side of the business. You know, the covert, behind-the-lines, get-your-hands-dirty side of things.’
‘Oh, obviously not. You couldn’t see Stella rubbing shoulders with criminals, could you?’
No, that was true. Sleeping with them, yes, but not rubbing shoulders.
‘She leaves the sordid end to people like me,’ I said.
He nodded in agreement at this, then did a double-take.
‘Oh, I say, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply anything about your role in the operation.’
‘Don’t fret it,’ I said generously, waving my glass in salute. ‘We all have our specialities.’
‘And yours is?’
‘Didn’t Veron
ica tell you?’
‘She may have done . . .’ He hesitated.
But I bet myself he had been too busy looking at Stella’s legs.
‘She was probably being deliberately vague,’ I said reassuringly. ‘Sometimes it’s best if the client doesn’t know exactly how we get results.’
He tapped the side of his nose. Honest to God, he tapped the side of his nose like he’d seen Cockney wide boys do in black-and-white films shown on Sunday afternoon television.
‘I’m with you. Say no more.’
I was glad one of us knew what we were talking about. I noticed my glass was empty.
‘What’s that one?’ I pointed to the pump at the end of the bar.
‘Ah, that’s the last of our special Christmas brew, Noel’s First. It’s a really quite powerful barley wine. Try a drop.’
He took my glass and started to pull.
‘You don’t get many barley wines on draught these days but my Uncle Edgar always has a pin at home over the Christmas holiday. He keeps it near the fire in the drawing-room and puts a heated poker into his tankard before he drinks it.’
‘Why?’
Murdo paused, mid-pull.
‘I don’t honestly know.’
‘Still, nice name for Christmas,’ I said, ‘First Noel and all that.’
He looked slightly stunned.
‘It’s named after our Head Brewer, Noel. It was his first Christmas brew. The Christmas carol had never occurred to me. Makes sense now you think about it.’
Behind me I heard a snort, and then a chair scraped back across the floor and footsteps stomped out of the door. The Head Brewer had taken his leave of us. He probably had made the connection, and heard it a million times.
Murdo looked positively relieved that he had gone.
‘Ah, good, he’s gone. That’s a relief,’ he said and because I had been thinking that, it seemed quite amusing and I think I giggled into my new beer.
‘Listen, Mr Angel – or can I call you Roy?’ he asked, walking round to my side of the bar.
