by Joyce Porter
cooperation of the police.’
This brought out more murmurs. The edges of the crowd began
to erode as those who felt uncomfortable at the mere mention of
the police retreated into the booths.
The cross-examination went on. ‘What’s the idea?’
‘Murder,’ said the Hon. Con, sensing that she was getting the
whip hand and playing her trumps for all they were worth.
‘Murder?’ The frown on Jack’s face deepened. ‘ Murder? You
mean the cops think Burberry was murdered?’
The Hon. Con bowed to the conventions of unobtrusively crossing
her fingers. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘First I’ve heard of it,’ Jack growled dubiously. ‘Burberry did
himself in. Everybody knows that.’
‘Were you here the night it happened?’
He looked even more worried. ‘Sure,’ he admitted. ‘ We was all
here.’ He looked round for support. Nobody moved a muscle. On
occasions discretion can be the better part of loyalty.
The Hon. Con produced a smile that was about as enticing as
a starving crocodile’s. ‘Why don’t you come over here and tell me
all about it, then?’ she asked.
Chapter Six
The Hon. Con couldn’t help feeling pretty bucked with herself when, after a moment’s understandable hesitation, the boy in the cummerbund consented to grant her an audience. Really, these youngsters were perfectly amenable, provided you knew how to handle them. So – sucks to the generation gap!
She watched smugly as the gawping onlookers were sent about their business and then proudly withdrew with Jack and a sleepy looking girl, presumably his current popsie, to one of the remoter booths. Pimp brought up the rear with four bottles of Coca-Cola. These latter were the Hon. Con’s contribution to the general gaiety and had cost her rather more than she had anticipated – Pimp having quietly pocketed the change. However, she refused to let a little set-back like this cast a cloud over the proceedings. Gleefully she asked her first question.
‘Where exactly did he die?’
The young man in the cummerbund – he’d told the Hon. Con that his name was Jack the John but she wasn’t sure that she believed him – pushed his girl-friend’s head into a more comfortable position on his shoulder and pointed dramatically downwards with his thumb. ‘Right here, under your feet!’
‘Golly!’ The Hon. Con stared pop-eyed at the table top. ‘ What happened?’
‘As far as I can remember he came staggering across here when he’d knocked back the whisky. He must have flaked out on that seat you’re sitting on because it was all covered with vomit. Then he must have kind of rolled off and on to the floor under the table. He’d thrown up there, too. Old Gorostiago went spare when he saw the mess. Blood and booze and whatever it was he’d had for his supper.’
‘Quite,’ said the Hon. Con, jolly thankful that she hadn’t succumbed to Miss Jones’s blandishments and put her best frock on. ‘And nobody realized that anything was the matter with him?’
Jack the John shrugged his shoulders and the sleepy girl moaned protestingly. ‘ No. You can see for yourself what it’s like in here. Besides’ – he grinned slyly – ‘it’s against the rules to look into the booths, no matter what noises you hear corning out of ’em.’
The juke box abruptly blared into life and all the lights went out. The Hon. Con raised her voice. ‘Didn’t any of his friends notice he was missing?’
‘What friends?’
‘Well – surely he had some?’
‘That stupid git? Look, Butch, your little friend Rodney was a dodo, a brontosaurus, last week’s top of the pops – anything you like – but dead, finished, a stale bun. Three years ago, I’ll grant you, he was the king – but that was three years ago. Things have changed since then. I’ve moved in, for one thing, and there’s no room in my set-up for souped-up, bug-eyed tear-abouts like Mack the Fork. Slash-happy bums like him are just a liability in a modern organization.’
‘I see,’ murmured the Hon. Con, not entirely sure that she did.
‘Jack don’t like using kids with records,’ Pimp broke in to explain proudly. ‘Likes all his gang to have good steady jobs, see? That way, if you do get nabbed, they don’t chuck the bloody book at you.’
‘Button it, blabber-mouth!’ said Jack without much interest. ‘ I’ve told you before, when I want your comments I’ll send you a postcard. You’ve no room to talk, have you? If it wasn’t for me you’d still be out scragging old ladies for their pension books.’
‘Oh, I know, Jack!’ Pimp was quick to acknowledge his inferiority. ‘You’re the boss – you’ve got the brains!’ He took the Hon. Con into his confidence. ‘He’s a right genius, you know – straight up. He thinks big. In a couple of years, like, he’ll have this town sewn up so tight they won’t be able to breathe without him getting a rake-off.’
‘With friends like him, who needs enemies?’ sighed Jack, not quite as displeased at hearing his praises sung as he tried to imply.
Pimp sniggered and set about wielding his trowel with even more enthusiasm. ‘Know what he did soon as he left school?’ he asked, sliding along the pew to get closer to the Hon. Con. ‘Got a job at the Totterbridge Athenaeum, in the gent’s cloakroom. He’s in charge of it now. Worked his way up, see? He’s got three other fellows working under him. Me – I’d have never thought of that, not in a million years I wouldn’t, but Jack – he’s got brains. All the important people in the town belong to that club – councillors, aldermen, solicitors, doctors, bank managers, shop keepers, everybody. Why,’ he boasted, ‘Jack’s only got to keep his ears open down there in the bog and he knows everything what’s going on in this dump before they knows it themselves. And they know you, too – don’t they, Jack?’ He nudged the Hon. Con in the ribs. ‘ If Jack wants a favour doing, he’s only got to ask and they falls over themselves. Mind you’ – he produced his sickening snigger again – ‘it’s a two-way traffic. Jack obliges them. Some of these big-wigs, they’ve got some very funny hobbies. You’d be surprised! Tell her about that dirty old man, Jack, what collects thirteen-year-old virgins! And tell her how much he pays for ’em!’
‘Shut your fat gob!’ Jack wasn’t joking this time. He leaned across the table and pushed his clenched fist under Pimp’s nose. ‘I’ve warned you before, you damned fool! If you can’t stop that mouth of yours from flapping, I’ll stop it for you – but permanent!’
‘Sorry, Jack.’ Pimp, cowed, slid back along the pew. ‘I was only trying to show her the difference between you and Mack.’
‘I think she’s got the message,’ said Jack loftily.
The Hon. Con spoke before she thought, ‘I don’t know about the message but I’ve certainly got a motive for murder.’
‘You’ve got what?’ Jack the John reacted so violently that his girl-friend’s head slipped off his shoulder and landed with a rousing crack on the table. ‘Oh, can it!’ he barked as she started to complain.
‘Now, you.’ He glared at the Hon. Con. ‘ What do you mean you’ve got a motive for murder?’
‘Rodney Burberry was a potential rival, wasn’t he? Oh, I know you’ve been saying he didn’t stand a chance, but that’s only your version, isn’t it? For all I know, he might have been a real threat to you and so you decided to get rid of him.’
‘Aw, talk sense! Mack was no blooming threat to me. He was pathetic! He couldn’t have led a gang of Girl Guides. Why, I even felt sorry for the poor mutt. When he first came back from Borstal I tried to help him. You should have heard him – full of some daft idea about doing the sub post offices. Him – with a probation officer breathing down his neck and every lousy jack in Totterbridge just waiting for him to take one step out of line! ‘‘ Cool it!’’ I kept telling him. ‘‘Get yourself a job. Make ’em think you’ve turned over a new leaf and then, when the pressure’s off, I’ll see about fitt
ing you in somewhere.’’ I might,’ said Jack the John bitterly, ‘have been talking to a bloody brick wall.’
‘But he did have a job, didn’t he?’ asked the Hon. Con.
‘Oh yes. He seemed willing to play along at first – take my advice, you know. But – oh – two or three weeks before he croaked it, he’d started getting difficult, the ungrateful bastard! Didn’t see why he couldn’t branch out on his own and all that guff. Well, I let him have it straight. There’s nobody going to challenge my authority in Totterbridge and the sooner he got that through his fat ears the better.’
The sleepy girl-friend, slumped now across the table, began to snore. Jack the John looked at her and sighed. ‘I reckon I can drop her now,’ he observed despondently. ‘She was Mack’s tart in the old days and, when I took over, she sort of went with the job.’ He gave a disgusted sniff. ‘What you might call a status symbol. Well, now I don’t have to bother showing Mack who’s boss, I can get myself something with a bit more life in it. She’s a right drag, she is really. Hey, Pimp – you want her?’
Pimp shook his head emphatically. ‘After the way you’ve griped about her?’
Jack the John nodded in sad agreement. ‘Yes, she’s a right cow. Here, let’s have a smoke and cheer ourselves up. You got any, Pimp? Well, hand ’em round, then!’
A shrill scream from the next booth cut through the din of the music. It was followed by a series of heavy thumps. ‘ You keep your dirty paws to yourself, you slob!’ yelled an irate female voice.
The Hon. Con, busy trying to collect her thoughts, took no notice. Absent-mindedly she waved away the heavy silver cigarette case which Pimp was offering her. ‘No, thanks.’
‘Aw, come on!’ objected Jack. ‘Let your hair down, Butch, and start living!’
‘Don’t use ’em,’ explained the Hon. Con. ‘Apart from the odd cigar at Christmas, of course.’
Jack took the cigarette case from Pimp’s hand and held it out across the table. ‘Take one!’ he said.
The Hon. Con glanced at him uncertainly. Good grief, he was only a common sort of working-class lad but … ‘Well, if you insist.’
Pimp lit the cigarette for her with a silver lighter.
Partly because of nerves and partly because of inexperience, the Hon. Con inhaled more enthusiastically than she had intended. Coughing and spluttering she wiped away the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Bit on the strong side,’ she croaked.
Jack the John grinned unpleasantly. ‘You’ll get used to ’ em.’
The Hon. Con tried to flap away the clouds of smoke which her amateurish puffing was producing. ‘What exactly happened the night young Burberry died?’
Jack the John looked bored. ‘Nothing much. He came in here fairly early on – about half-past nine, quarter to ten – something like that. Me and Pimp were over by the bar with some of the others, having a coke. Mack comes over and starts trying to muscle in – like he was one of the gang. Well, at first everybody sort of ignored him but, when he’d interrupted me a couple of times when I was talking, I began to get a bit cheesed. I’d got a few business matters I wanted to discuss with the boys – in private – so I tipped the wink to Pimp here and he told Mack to push off.’
‘Quite polite, I was,’ Pimp put in. ‘Anybody else’d have seen ages before, like, that he wasn’t wanted but Mack was that thick you’d got to spell it out for him.’
‘Well,’ Jack went on, idly flicking the ash from his cigarette on to his girl-friend’s false hair piece, ‘instead of clearing off nice and quiet like, he starts getting shirty. Before you know where you are, him and Pimp are squaring up to each other. Pimp starts reaching for his flick knife and I see we’re in for a right blood bath if I don’t do something, but quick.’
‘Well,’ Pimp broke in angrily, ‘you heard what he called me! I don’t take names like that from nobody.’
‘Yeah,’ sneered Jack, ‘I heard what he called you and I knew what he’d do to you if it came to a punch up.’ He turned to the Hon. Con. ‘He’d got this bottle sticking out of his pocket, see? I thought he’d come along armed. Pimp reckons he’s no end of a tough guy but Mack’d have slashed him to butcher’s mince in a straight fight. Now, don’t start arguing with me, Pimp. He’d have murdered you.’
‘Never!’ Pimp exploded furiously. ‘Never in a million years! He’d gone soft. You said yourself he had.’
Jack the John sighed and looked at the Hon. Con almost as though he was asking for sympathy. ‘I only said that to break things up, dolt! I’ve told you often enough before, I don’t want any trouble down here. Punch-ups outside – that’s the skin off your face – but I’m not having ’ em in the Kama Sutra. Savee?’
‘Sure,’ said Pimp sullenly. ‘You’re the boss.’
‘Just so’s you remember it!’ Jack gave his attention once more to the Hon. Con. ‘Well, as soon as I’d given ’em the lead, the rest of ’em started in on him. You know the sort of thing – saying he was a mummy’s boy and that he’d got a yellow streak and he couldn’t even keep his girl and God knows what. A couple of minutes and most of the club was joining the act, sending him up good and proper. It was just what I wanted. He wouldn’t have the guts to try any rough stuff against a mob like that and I thought he’d catch on that nowadays he was just a nothing and have the sense to clear out.’
‘Was the club like it is now?’ asked the Hon. Con. ‘Were the lights on?’
‘No.’ Jack the John surveyed his domain. ‘Like it is now. Music and everything. We were over by the bar, of course, and it is a bit lighter over there.’
‘I see. Well, go on.’
‘There’s not much more to it. Somebody began sort of nudging Mack, not much but just enough to shove him a couple of steps. Then somebody push him back the other way. Like a bunch of sloppy school kids, but it’s effective. Nobody gets hurt but it shows the sucker in the middle precisely where he is. Mack stood about half a minute of it before he broke. He was practically in tears by then. He got away from the mob into the middle of the floor and sort of stood there and started shouting. Said he hadn’t gone soft and that he’d show ’em he was just as tough as he’d ever been. You know the sort of thing – shouting defiance. Then he pulls this bottle of whisky out of his pocket and waves it about. Say’s he’s nicked it and that he’d brought it along to share with his pals. Well, that nearly brought the house down. I ask you – nicking a lousy bottle of whisky and boasting about it! The kids nearly laughed themselves silly. This gets him madder than ever and he pulls the top off the bottle and tips about half the stuff down his throat. I don’t know when I’ve laughed so much for years. Well, then he starts coughing and choking and he drops the bottle and sort of clutches his throat. That just about brings the house down. Then he staggers off over here and somebody kicks the bottle out of the way and we all start dancing. And that was that.’
‘Hm,’ said the Hon. Con and stubbed her cigarette out in the boot polish tin lid which was serving as an ash tray. Now that she’d seen the Kama Sutra she could well understand that nobody had even noticed Rodney Burberry dying painfully in a corner. These teenagers were like sheep and Jack the John seemed a very efficient shepherd. Once he had labelled Rodney a back number the rest of them would avoid the youngster like the plague.
‘Have another fag!’
The Hon. Con came out of her reverie to find that Pimp’s silver cigarette case was being held open once again under her nose. ‘Er – no, thanks.’ She tried to accompany the refusal with a nonchalant laugh. ‘Had my quota.’
‘They’re very expensive cigarettes,’ said Jack the John as though the Hon. Con had complained about the quality.
‘Oh, I don’t doubt that. Trouble is, they’re a bit wasted on me. I’m not much of a smoker. Cigarettes make my throat sore.’
‘Plenty more cokes in the bar,’ said Pimp.
‘Eh? Oh, yes.’ The Hon. Con fished around in her pockets and, regretfully, produced a pound note. This was turning out to be a ver
y expensive evening. She just hoped it was going to be worth it.
Pimp’s grubby left hand absorbed the note but his cigarette case didn’t waver. With a sigh the Hon. Con accepted the inevitable. Pimp flashed his lighter and then slid off into the darkness to fetch the refreshments.
Jack the John yawned and stretched himself. The still sleeping figure of his girl-friend caught his eye. By the simple expedient of seizing a handful of her hair he raised her head several inches from the table. His lips approached her ear. ‘Give us a kiss, love!’ he bawled.
One eye opened wearily. ‘Aw, bugger off!’ came the affectionate reply. ‘Leave us alone, can’t you?’
Jack the John opened his hand and the girl-friend’s head dropped back on to the table. ‘Trouble with her,’ said Jack the John, ‘is her candle doesn’t even burn at one end.’
The Hon. Con couldn’t be bothered trying to work this out. She had, she reminded herself sharply, a job to do. ‘When Rodney opened this bottle of whisky, did he remove the tin foil cap first?’
Jack raised his eyebrows. ‘Meaning was it an apparently unopened bottle or had he had the top off himself to stick the poison in?’ He thought for a moment. ‘ Can’t remember. Does it matter, seeing as how he bought the poison and the booze himself?’
‘Perhaps some of the others noticed,’ said the Hon. Con. ‘Think I’ll just toddle off and have a chat with some of them.’ She began to ease herself along the bench.
Before she could get to the end Pimp was back with the bottles of coke. He caught Jack the John’s eye and sat down quickly, blocking the Hon. Con’s avenue of escape.
‘The others won’t be able to tell you any more than me,’ said Jack the John softly.
‘Well’ – the Hon. Con tried to raise a bit of bluster – ‘I can’t be sure of that till I’ve questioned them, can I?’
‘I’m telling you, Butch.’
The Hon. Con moved back to her original position on the pew and recognized unhappily that she was trapped. There was the wall on one side of her and Pimp on the other. She was at somewhat of a loss to know how to tackle the situation. Her eyes were beginning to ache with the strain of peering at Jack the John through the darkness and her head was throbbing with the ceaseless thump and yowl of the music. She’d got a jolly funny taste in her mouth, too. Must be that dratted Coca-Cola stuff. Gosh, she wouldn’t half mind a nice cup of tea.
