The Mother's Day Mystery

by Peter Bartram

  Had Snitcher betrayed me in a fit of pique?

  I stood rigid like I'd been nailed to the floor.

  I was seconds away from being discovered.

  I had nowhere to run.

  I'd have no excuse for what I'd been doing. No clever explanation to offer.

  My brain felt like a fog had descended. I could always see a way to talk myself out of a difficulty. But not this time. The fog obscured my view.

  My heart had been colonised by drum majorettes pounding out a samba rhythm. Sweat pricked at my pores.

  My body had closed down. Given up. Prepared to surrender.

  But then a lone brain cell sent a message to my hand. My hand twitched and I turned off the torch.

  If my hand could work, so could my legs. I could run for it.

  But where?

  With five more steps the feet would turn the corner. I felt the air move as the figure approached. I caught the whiff of something sharp. Like the stench of rotten eggs.

  The smell kicked my senses into action.

  Silently, I slid along the wall away from the approaching feet. I clung to the wall and prayed my figure would blend into the darkness. If Shirley's black polo-neck sweater kept me invisible, I'd even buy those summer shorts she'd been going on about.

  I wished I'd blacked up like Snitcher.

  I edged further along the wall keeping my eye on the T-junction. And backed into a set of lockers. I felt around them. They stuck out about two feet from the wall. If I could get to the other end of them perhaps I could hide myself.

  I glanced back in the direction of the footsteps. The flicker of a torch appeared as the feet approached the junction. I tiptoed to the far end of the lockers. Crept behind them and pressed myself against the wall.

  The footsteps reached the junction and stopped.

  The torch beam flicked up the corridor towards me. It played over the floor and lingered over the lockers.

  I held my breath like breathing had just become a luxury I couldn't afford.

  My chest tightened as the little circle of light from the torch flicked around.

  Then it moved away.

  I breathed out. As silent as a dying saint.

  The footsteps started again. This time walking away from me along the other leg of the corridor - leading away from the T-junction.

  Cautiously, I peered round the corner of the lockers.

  The figure was tall, cast in shadow, and swinging the torch in front of him. But I recognised that cocky walk.

  Owen Griffiths.

  Chemistry master.

  And night-time prowler. At least we had something in common.

  He wasn't looking for an intruder. I could tell that straight away. When you're hunting for someone you look right and left. Your eyes dart everywhere. You start and you stop and you move forward again. Tentatively. You watch your step. You only move when you've satisfied yourself you've drawn a blank on the ground you've covered.

  But Griffiths wasn't walking like that. Snitcher hadn't tipped him off that an errant journalist was on the loose. Griffiths was striding ahead like he had to get somewhere fast.

  Like a man with a job to do.

  Like a man on a mission.

  And I thought I knew where he was heading. The chemistry lab. It was where I'd interviewed him the day before. The place where he'd spoken highly of Spencer Hooke.

  As Griffiths disappeared through the door at the end of the corridor, I stepped out from my hiding place behind the lockers.

  I had two choices.

  The sensible choice.

  The stupid choice.

  If I took the sensible choice, I'd head out of the school like I was wearing jet-propelled shoes. I would race down Burdock Slope and disappear into the night. Tomorrow morning I'd arrive at the office and file my copy. Life would return to what passed for normal in my world.

  If I took the stupid choice, I'd follow Griffiths to find out what urgent business he had at three o'clock in the morning. I'd spy on him and hope I wasn't caught. I'd risk my career for a scoop. What was it old Kipling wrote in his poem? "If you can make one heap of all your winnings, And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss." And if I lost, of course, I'd take Rudyard's advice and never breathe a word about my loss. I wouldn't get the chance. I'd be in jail.

  I brushed myself down, switched on the torch, and shaded the beam with my hand. Then I headed down the corridor wondering what I'd find when I spied on Griffiths.

  I pushed through the door at the end of the corridor and out into an open area.

  I knew where he was as soon as I saw the lights on in the chemistry lab. Whatever he was up to, Griffiths was hiding in plain sight. No doubt he'd have an explanation ready in the unlikely event that someone happened along.

  But who was going to appear on the scene in a grammar school in the middle of the night?

  I knew the answer to that question.

  The chemistry lab was at the end of a block of classrooms. No doubt the architect thought that if the place blew up, it would limit the damage to the rest of the building. Clever of him.

  There was a bicycle shed opposite the chemistry lab. I crept into it and hid behind a bike draped with a tarpaulin. I could see one end of the lab well but had no view of the other.

  Just my luck, Griffiths was up the other end. I crouched down behind the tarp wondering whether to move my position and risk being spotted.

  I decided to chance it. But before I moved, Griffiths stepped into view. I didn’t know what he'd been doing at the other end of the lab, but now he was focused on some equipment. It looked like the equipment I'd seen him setting up the day before. There were flasks and beakers and test tubes. There was a Bunsen burner and a tripod.

  Griffiths disappeared again into the part of the room I couldn't see. When he returned, he was wearing a white lab coat. He took a small packet out of the lab coat's pocket and cut the top of it with a pair of scissors.

  He picked up the conical glass flask with a spout I'd seen before. He shook a little powder from the packet into the flask. Then he plugged the narrow neck of the flask with a cork which had a glass tube running through the middle of it. He fixed a rubber tube to the spout of the conical flask and shoved another glass tube into the other end of the rubber. Then he put the glass into a test tube which was half full with a clear liquid.

  Watching Griffiths reminded me of the chemistry lessons I used to snooze through at school.

  This time I was riveted by the action.

  Griffiths returned his attention to the glass tube sticking out of the neck of the conical flask. He took a small funnel and inserted it in the top of the tube. Then he picked up a bottle containing a dark misty liquid. He poured a few drops of the liquid into the funnel.

  He leant over and looked closely as the drops rolled down the inside of the glass tube and dropped onto the powder in the conical flask. Within a few seconds a grey smoke started to rise from the powder.

  Griffiths blocked off the top of the tube with the funnel so the smoke could only escape through the spout of the flask. It drifted up the spout and through the rubber tube and down the glass tube into the clear liquid in the test tube. The liquid bubbled as the smoke passed through it - and then slowly became opaque.

  Griffiths looked up from his experiment and smiled.

  The kind of sinister grin Bela Lugosi sported in those old nineteen-thirties horror films still showing on TV.

  Griffiths rummaged in a drawer under his test bench. He took out a sheet of paper and an envelope. He spent several minutes writing something, folded the paper, and put it in the envelope. He wrote something on the envelope - presumably the name of the recipient.

  I was willing to bet it wasn't a note for the milkman asking him to leave an extra pint and some yoghurt.

  Then he dismantled his apparatus and poured the contents down the test bench's sink. He washed the flasks and tubes in running water and left them to dry on the bench.

  He disappear
ed from sight and a moment later the lights of the lab went out. I heard a door open and Griffiths hurried across the yard towards Burdock Slope. I crept out from behind the tarp and poked my head around the side of the bike shed.

  Griffiths was at the bottom of the slope. He'd taken a torch from his pocket and he used it to give three quick flashes up the road. I heard the low growl of an engine spark into life. A moment later, a grey van appeared at the foot of the slope.

  It was an old wreck of a van. There was rust under the door, blotchy marks on the paintwork, and a dent in the rear wheel-arch.

  The driver's window wound down. It was dark inside the van and I couldn't see the driver. But his hand appeared at the open window. Griffiths stepped forward and handed in the envelope. The window wound up.

  The driver revved the engine and it backfired twice. I recognised the sound. My first car, an old banger, did the same. It happened when the petrol didn't ignite in the combustion chamber. The fuel seeped into the exhaust and fired late. The local garage's mechanic told me I was running the car on the wrong air and fuel mixture. Too much air, too little fuel. I remember him telling me that every car backfired differently. Just as everyone could be identified by their own cough.

  These thoughts flashed through my mind as the van backfired twice. Then it pulled away from the kerb and drove off.

  Griffiths hurried back up the slope, crossed the yard, and disappeared into the school.

  There was no point in following Griffiths. His night's work was done.

  ***

  I had plenty to think about as I drove back to Brighton.

  I'm no chemist but it wasn't difficult to work out what Griffiths's clandestine experiment was all about. He was testing the purity of drugs. It could have been heroin, cocaine or some concoction I'd never heard of. But, sure as hell, it wasn't sherbet.

  And it was illegal.

  This put the Spencer Hooke murder in a new light. Griffiths had looked like a careful man. He'd conducted his tests at night and cleared up afterwards. There wouldn't be any evidence for the police to find. But, perhaps, Griffiths hadn't been careful enough. He'd told me that Hooke was a bright pupil. The star of his chemistry A-level class. Expected to go to Cambridge University. Perhaps Hooke was clever enough - or just lucky enough - to have stumbled on Griffiths's secret.

  Snitcher had told me how Hooke had graduated from minor blackmail of his fellow students to grown-ups. Perhaps Griffiths was the first of them. The stash in Hooke's account was big enough to be funded by drugs money. If that was the case, Griffiths had to be a top suspect as the car driver who left Hooke dead on the Bostal road.

  But Griffiths wasn't the only person involved in the drugs caper. I'd seen him pass an envelope to a man in a van. I couldn't see who it was. And from where I was hiding, I hadn't been able to log the number plate. But I was guessing that the van man was a messenger to take news about the quality of the drugs back to the Mr Big behind the operation. Perhaps the van man had killed Hooke. Or Mr Big. Or persons unknown, as the cops liked to call them.

  I was sitting on a story that would put a grin on Figgis's face - and make the national papers. The only trouble was I couldn't write a word of it. If I did, I'd be asked where I'd got the information.

  I couldn't say without incriminating myself.

  Nothing about this story was going to be easy.

  Chapter 10

  I arrived in the newsroom the following morning after not enough sleep and not enough breakfast.

  Correction, after no breakfast. I'd slept through my alarm. By the time I'd woken up, I was late. So I had to hustle to reach the office in time to write a story before deadline.

  First, I picked up my telephone and called the number I'd seen on the chemical society card Owen Griffiths had shown me.

  The phone was answered by a man with a brisk voice: "Fletcher."

  I said: "Good morning, Mr Fletcher. I'm calling from the Evening Chronicle and I was hoping to get some information about the meeting you held earlier this week on polymers."

  "Didn't realise a popular newspaper would be interested in a technical matter. But you're out of luck. Meeting was cancelled. Professor Williamson, the speaker, had a bad attack of shingles."

  "Sorry to have troubled you. Perhaps another time."

  The line went dead.

  So Griffiths had lied about attending the meeting. Perhaps he'd also lied about his car being in for a service. I'd need to speak to him again. But if he'd lied once, he'd lie twice. Best if I pursued other lines of enquiry before I tackled him.

  But what lines?

  I yawned a couple of times and thought about that. This was a case for Crampton’s legendary cunning. If Detective Inspector Bernard Holdsworth had sight of the riches in Spencer Hooke's building society passbook, he'd have to take the idea of murder seriously. He'd have to reopen the case. Then I would have a story. So I needed to find a way to put Holdsworth in the picture while keeping me out of it.

  I'd lain awake in bed puzzling over the problem. And as the thin light of dawn crept between the gaps in my curtains I'd hit on a way to do it.

  Hooke had held his account at the Worthing branch of the building society. He had a record of his deposits in his passbook, but the branch would also hold a record of the deposits and the balance in his account.

  If the branch manager discovered that Hooke had died a violent death and the police were investigating the case, he'd be bound to tell them about the account. Holdsworth would then have a motive for Hooke's murder he couldn't ignore.

  I reached for the telephone directory and looked up the building society number. Then I crossed to one of the telephone booths on the opposite side of the newsroom.

  Years ago, Frank Figgis had had them built. He'd intended reporters to use them for confidential calls to contacts. But what Figgis didn't know was that most of the time reporters used them to make dates or place bets with bookies.

  But not me. At least, not this time. I was inside the booth at the far end because I needed to practice a little deception. "Oh! what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." I could almost feel the ghost of Sir Walter Scott grinning beside me.

  I dialled the building society number.

  The phone was answered after three rings by a young woman with a plummy voice. "Sussex Coast Building Society. Who is speaking?"

  "I'm calling on behalf of Spencer Hooke who has an account at your branch."

  "Are you Spencer Hooke?"

  "Mr Hooke is dead."

  "I'm so sorry."

  "So is Spencer."

  "May we tender our condolences?"

  "Very kind. But it would be even more useful if you could tender the information about Spencer Hooke's account to Detective Inspector Holdsworth at Shoreham Police Station."

  "Information about our clients is confidential even when they have passed on," she said.

  "That must give them a lot of a reassurance in the after-life. I can just hear Spencer now: 'Well, St Peter, it's a bit of a choker being dead, but at least I've the comfort of knowing no-one can snitch a peek at my building society account'."

  "This is not a matter for sarcasm."

  "I agree. A serious crime is suspected."

  "A crime?" Plummy voice sounded alarmed.

  "Yes, Spencer Hooke was killed by a hit-and-run driver. It's a police matter."

  "Are you at the police station?"

  "Frequently."

  "I'd like to know who I'm talking to."

  "Me, too. But please make sure the information about the £1,793.17s.8d in Spencer's account is passed to Mr Holdsworth this morning. Obstructing the police in their enquiries is a very serious matter."

  I replaced the receiver before she could ask me again for my name. I pushed out of the booth and headed back to my desk feeling pleased with myself. If I knew how much Hooke had in his account, the building society would worry about who else had the information. They'd be on the blower to Holdsworth before you c
ould say "compound interest".

  I sat down at my desk and thought about my other problem. I'd promised Shirley I'd try to get some information about her missing mother. I glanced at my watch. It was just after nine. I vaguely recalled that in Australia time was about eight hours ahead of Britain. At least, parts of the country were. The rest of it was about fifty years behind. (Of course, I'd be cautious about saying that in front of Shirley. Call me a coward, but I'm as attached to my balls as the next man.)

  I leaned back in my captain's chair, picked up the phone, and asked for the international operator. There was a ninety-minute wait for a line to Australia, I was told. My stomach was rumbling like a grumbling volcano. That reminded me I hadn't had any breakfast. So I stood up and headed for the tea room.

  ***

  When I pushed through the door into the tea room, Susan Wheatcroft, the paper's business reporter, was over by the drinks table.

  She was pouring coffee into a mug.

  I ambled over and said: "Mine's white but strong."

  Susan said: "So I'd heard. But how about your coffee, honeybunch?"

  She guffawed at her joke and made her chins wobble. Susan had a big personality to match her figure.

  I grabbed a mug and Susan handed me the coffee thermos.

  "Got anything for the midday edition?" Susan asked. She reached for a bun and took a giant bite out of it.

  "Nothing much. How about you?"

  "Possible big deal brewing with one of the county's banking magnates."

  "Magnates? Do you find they attract you?"

  Susan pulled a face. "Pardon me while I don't laugh," she said. "I'm talking about a merchant banker. And that's not rhyming slang. Although it could be in the case of this shyster."

  I poured coffee into my mug. "Anyone who's crossed my path?" I raised the mug to my lips.

  Susan stuffed the rest of the bun into her mouth. "Doubt it. I reckon this fellow has sailed close to the wind a few times, but he's always managed to tack out of trouble. Charles Fox."

  I looked up from the mug so quickly, I spilt my coffee.

  I said: "You mean the Charles Fox from the Fox banking family?"

  "Fox by name. And foxy by nature."