England Expects

by Sara Sheridan

  Mirabelle humoured him. She was getting what she wanted, after all. ‘And he was a ladies’ man like you, I’d guess?’

  McGregor watched the encounter open-mouthed. Mirabelle seemed almost flirtatious. Still, the fellow spilled the beans.

  ‘I never saw Joey with a woman. He was obsessed with the gee-gees, love. It was like a religion. There’s normally hardly any women at the boxing. That means you’re special, ain’t you? Can I get you a drink? A lady like you needs feeding up.’

  The man ran his eyes down Mirabelle’s body and licked his lips. He dwelled on the swell of her blouse.

  ‘Enough’s enough, fella,’ McGregor cut in, but Mirabelle was ahead of him and had already moved away.

  The Superintendent quickly gave up curtailing her enquiries, realising with a guilty twinge that the men responded to her more openly than when he asked the questions. It was amazing. Mirabelle had an instinct for exactly what information to push for and she was formidable – steel-willed and smiling. She made an interrogation sound as if it was only a conversation. Between bouts the Superintendent fetched drinks, acting the solicitous minder rather than making enquiries of his own.

  ‘Is that your old man?’ he heard one fellow ask, nodding in his direction.

  ‘He’s my brother,’ Mirabelle confided in a whisper and McGregor allowed himself a surreptitious smile.

  When the young fighters stepped into the ring the Superintendent wasn’t sure if Mirabelle would be able to watch them hammer it out, but as the bell sounded she took the violence in her stride and didn’t flinch when the matches became heated. It couldn’t be easy for a woman, watching the kids slug each other until they were swollen and bloody while the audience bayed for victory.

  ‘You aren’t squeamish, are you?’ McGregor checked.

  A look from Mirabelle dismissed the idea.

  In the end, both the local boys won. Johnny Thwaite, a stocky, muscle-bound sixteen-year-old from Eastbourne, beat a seventeen-year-old called Davie Osler till the poor kid gave up. Afterwards, Thwaite, elated, climbed out of the ring to hug his father, a whiff of sweat and the tang of blood wafting off him, the heat of his body palpable on the air. He looked like he could go another ten rounds.

  ‘Well done, Johnny,’ the boy’s father said, flinging his arms around his son. ‘You slammed him. You’d have made your mother proud tonight.’

  The fat priest, who it seemed had won money, came over and clapped the kid on the back.

  Second up, there was Ricky Philips, a fourteen-year-old flyweight who was the favourite not only on account of his left hook but also because he came from Kemp Town. He knocked out a Jewish kid who’d come down from Shoreditch. One tight punch after another, and the crowd raised the roof on the Crown and Anchor. The MC was barely audible over the screaming until Philips triumphed, raising his hand in the air and taking a wide-grinned bow as the MC counted out the beaten boy to the jeers of the crowd.

  McGregor watched Mirabelle, who remained impassive.

  ‘It’s not the first time I’ve been to the boxing,’ she assured him and McGregor didn’t ask again.

  At the end of the night the fighters were taken off to have their wounds seen to and the priest climbed into the ring to say a prayer. The audience stood respectfully, heads bowed. Then the barman called time and McGregor helped Mirabelle into her light summer coat and walked her outside.

  ‘I hope that boy gets back up to London all right,’ she said.

  ‘The Jewish kid? I’m sure he’ll be looked after.’

  ‘The last train must have gone though.’

  Miss Bevan, McGregor noted, was kind-hearted even if she was ruthless in her enquiries. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear as McGregor touched her arm to guide her towards his car. The air was still warm despite the fading light and a balmy breeze swept in from the sea. The roar of engines starting cut the silence as the well-heeled among the crowd headed home. One man walked into the blackness with his son on his shoulders explaining the Queensberry rules. Several more ran for the last bus, shouting the names of the fighters.

  ‘I’ll see you back home,’ the Superintendent offered, holding open the door as Mirabelle slipped into the front seat.

  ‘You’ve been down here a while now.’

  ‘A couple of years, I suppose.’

  ‘Has England been good to you?’

  ‘It’s a lot warmer than Scotland, that’s for sure.’ The Superintendent shrugged. ‘But the golf courses are tamer. I miss losing my ball in the gorse. Scotland’s a wildcat. She’d scratch you to death given the chance. Brighton’s a softer place.’

  Mirabelle raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘Softer? You really think so?’

  ‘Yes. The odd homicide notwithstanding. Things seem less serious down here. I’m probably due a trip north. I don’t want to lose my edge.’

  ‘Family?’

  ‘I don’t have any family now. Only a few friends.’ His mother had died the year before. The family home in Davidson’s Mains had lain empty for months now. He couldn’t decide what to do with the old place, and the family solicitor kept pestering him about it.

  ‘Well, it would be a nice trip, wouldn’t it? To go back to Edinburgh to see them. A holiday.’

  The Superintendent stared out of the car window at an old bombsite. There were plenty of places where the detritus hadn’t been cleared – years after the initial strike. On some sites no one had any idea what to build. They’d reconstructed the old viaduct on the London Road and the Odeon cinema when they had been hit. Out here where the railway line had been destroyed one night during an air raid, the ground was still strewn with bricks though the train tracks were long repaired.

  ‘So,’ McGregor asked, ‘what do you reckon about our Mr Gillingham?’

  Mirabelle sighed. ‘If you’re going to slit someone’s throat you’ve got to be a committed killer. You’ve got to be harbouring a grievance or be commissioned by someone harbouring a grievance. I don’t know, Superintendent, but Joey Gillingham was in Brighton very early and the racecourse isn’t open today. So either there’s a woman involved – and a man would slit the throat of his wife’s lover, so I’d rule that out before anything else – or he was onto something connected with his work. Something dangerous. The second seems more likely – no one tonight associated Joey with women. No one had even seen him with one.’

  ‘You think he was murdered over a betting scam? Match fixing?’

  Mirabelle nodded. ‘Perhaps he just owed a lot of money to someone particularly nasty. But then, even if you owe an awful lot of money a creditor doesn’t usually kill you. They’re not going to get their money back that way. It’s far more likely they’ll have a hard man beat you up – perhaps break a leg or a couple of ribs. Isn’t that the way?’

  ‘You would know,’ McGregor teased. ‘Miss McGuigan & McGuigan Debt Recovery.’

  Mirabelle ignored the joke. ‘Anyway, Joey Gillingham didn’t die by mistake because a heavy went too far. Whoever killed him meant to do it. And I keep coming back to the fact that he was a journalist. So, my guess is that he was onto something, perhaps a betting scam, like you say. The racecourse or the boxing ring. Lots of the men tonight had taken tips from Joey. He had a sense of who was going to win and he was generous with his hunches. If I were looking into it, I’d check the racecourse and the bookmakers. Does it remind you of when we first met?’ she said and immediately wished she could take back the words.

  Two years before, just after McGregor bagged the Superintendent’s job, Mirabelle’s boss, Ben McGuigan, had gone missing at Brighton racecourse. He’d discovered a money-laundering operation which had ultimately cost him his life.

  McGregor smiled shyly. ‘Well, a love affair aside, Mr Gillingham’s editor didn’t know any reason for him to be in Brighton by eight this morning, so I reckon you’re right.’

  Mirabelle shook her head. ‘The editor wouldn’t necessarily come clean. Justice for one of his stringers might not be his top priority.
If Joey was in Brighton on a story, the paper would want to put another reporter onto it, not have the police all over everything before they had the chance to get their headline.’

  McGregor considered this. ‘Fair enough. And, of course, the reason Gillingham died might have been in the room with us tonight. Someone might have wanted to stop him getting to the fight.’

  Mirabelle shrugged. ‘It’s more interesting, isn’t it, why he was in Brighton so early? It doesn’t make sense. That’s where the mystery lies. For my money.’

  The Superintendent had to concede she was right.

  They had made it as far as the front. The sun was sinking below the horizon in a gorgeous peachy glow. As they passed the pier the strings of illuminations turned off, and the jetty plunged into darkness. The Kingsway was quiet tonight and the only pedestrian they saw was a policeman on his beat. They didn’t speak again until McGregor pulled up at The Lawns.

  From the front seat Mirabelle glanced at the long black windows of her flat on the first floor. ‘I don’t suppose there was any clue in his death mask?’

  ‘I only saw him on the slab and by then his eyes were closed,’ McGregor admitted.

  ‘You didn’t see him at the barber’s?’

  ‘No. Robinson had dispatched the body to the mortuary by the time I arrived. No harm in it – it was a hot summer’s day and there were a lot of people around. It’s a busy part of town. It wasn’t as if there was any dubiety about the cause of death.’

  An expression passed across Mirabelle’s face – a silent question. He didn’t answer it.

  ‘And did Mr Robinson take a photograph of Mr Gillingham’s corpse while it was still in the chair?’ she enquired.

  McGregor shook his head and said nothing.

  ‘Thank you, Superintendent,’ she said. ‘I hope you catch your man.’

  McGregor was about to speak, but Mirabelle had uncrossed her long legs, opened the car door briskly and was on her way up the steps before he could gather himself. He’d expected to have more time to say good night. It had been on the tip of his tongue to ask her to the cinema at the weekend and to dinner. There was a nice little place along the coast, though admittedly it wasn’t the Savoy. She might have waited for him to open the car door like a gentleman. Her perfume lingered.

  ‘Good night,’ he called as the front door closed at the top of the steps. He wished Mirabelle wasn’t so formal. He’d like her to call him by his first name. It had been a while since anyone had used it. No one down here knew him well enough.

  His heart sank in the ensuing silence. He waited for the lamp to light the first-floor drawing room but instead of a warm yellow glow there was only a dark movement behind the glass. Mirabelle Bevan’s pale outline was framed for a moment in the black window, a vision hovering above him in the darkness. Then she drew the curtains.

  Chapter 4

  The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

  The next morning in the office Mirabelle waited patiently for Bill Turpin to settle into his chair. It was Tuesday and Bill always spent an hour or two on paperwork. Tuesday was the start of the midweek lull. For those punters who were struggling financially, any money earned over the weekend was long gone, and for most of them payday didn’t loom till Friday. As far as clients went, Monday and Thursday were the days the agency was commissioned. The result was that Tuesday and Wednesday marked a quiet period in the office – time to catch up.

  ‘Bill, I wondered if you’d heard anything else about Joey Gillingham?’ said Mirabelle.

  Vesta looked up from eating a slice of cinnamon toast. This was also a Tuesday occurrence. On Tuesdays and Thursdays Charlie’s early shifts left Vesta bereft of a breakfast companion. It always made Mirabelle smile – twice a week the office smelled gloriously of coffee and toast, as it always had before Charlie arrived.

  Bill took a deep breath as if he was reluctant to speak. ‘Well, I don’t like it. They’re in a right old tizzy at the station. It’s just a load of nonsense and it’ll mess up the investigation. It already has.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Bill squirmed uncomfortably. ‘Utter nonsense,’ he repeated. ‘It’s a professional job – the bloke obviously got into bother with someone he owed money. I mean, look at his trade. And they’re trying to cover it up ’cause of all that rubbish of theirs. Secret handshakes and the like. Next they’ll be making out he was a saint. A sports writer on a red top. It ain’t right.’

  Vesta licked her fingers. ‘What are you on about, Bill?’

  ‘All that dressing up. It’s just plain silly. I wouldn’t demean myself. I done my duty in the war.’

  Vesta stared at Mirabelle, her expression a question mark.

  ‘Oh no!’ Mirabelle burst out. ‘You’re not suggesting that Mr Gillingham was a freemason?’

  ‘Not just him. They’re all masons in the force. Every one of them. They got it sewed up tight – not just the police but the magistrates, too. Every constable and all the sergeants and higher than that and all. The only reason I got the job when it came up at Wellington Road was ’cause I was good with the police dogs and I’d mind the desk on meeting days. They’d never have let me go when they did if I’d joined their stupid club, but I ain’t one for all that. I’m not a Papist either, mind. Secret languages – worse than Latin. Symbols chalked on walls like Guy Fawkes. Me and Julie are Church of England, see, and they say that’s fine. But Church of England ain’t full of secrets, is it? Church of England is up front. We’re normal.’

  Without blinking, Vesta folded the remaining crust of toast neatly into her mouth and took a swig of Camp coffee. ‘What exactly is a freemason?’

  ‘It’s a boys’ club,’ Mirabelle offered. ‘Like Bill says. They have meetings and dress up, and there are all kinds of ceremonies. If you’re a mason you have to help other masons and sign up to their code of honour. They call it a brotherhood.’

  ‘Like the Girl Guides? But for men?’

  ‘Sort of.’ Bill shrugged his shoulders. ‘With secret signals. Private handshakes. Codes. I had it up to here for years when I was in the force. I can tell when a copper’s got something going on with the masons and I could see it today the way they were all hush-hush about that body.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yeah. I know how it goes. Honestly, I get the knock with it. Drives me potty.’

  ‘The knock?’

  ‘You know. It gives me the creeps. Ain’t you heard of anyone getting the knock before?’

  Vesta shrugged.

  ‘I thought everyone knew that. Don’t they say it in London?’

  ‘Well, not in Bermondsey.’

  Mirabelle decided to interrupt their debate on the ins and outs of Sussex dialect. ‘So, what you’re saying, Bill, if I’m not mistaken, is that the police are hushing up certain aspects of Mr Gillingham’s death because he was a fellow mason?’

  ‘Yeah. I reckon so.’

  Mirabelle looked vexed. ‘But wouldn’t they be even keener to catch the killer if Mr Gillingham was one of their own? I mean, if one of their brotherhood was murdered, surely they’d want to make sure justice was done? What is it you think they’re hushing up?’

  ‘They removed the body sharpish, didn’t they?’ Mirabelle nodded and Bill continued. ‘Yeah. So that’s my question. Why did they whisk him off like that? It’s all them secrets – gotta be. I was thinking about it, and it can only be one of three things.’ Here Bill held up three fingers, folding them down one by one as he elucidated. ‘Either the dead man was a mason and they’re hushing it up because somehow they reckon he’ll bring dishonour to the brotherhood. Or, second, you got to consider what had the killer done to the bloke?’ Bill shuddered. ‘And, that, we’ll never find out. Once something like that’s disappeared inside the station, it’s not coming out again. So, they’re hushing it up because it’s a dishonour to the poor guy himself. Or,’ here he lowered his voice, ‘maybe it was them that killed Gillingham. Maybe he’d threatened to reveal somet
hing and they had to get rid of him to cover it up. A heart that conceals and a tongue that never reveals. That’s their motto. I’m saying that it might be the freemasons that did it, see? The police themselves.’

  Vesta laughed out loud. ‘Oh, come on! Policemen?’ Then her face dropped. The year before, her childhood friend, Lindon, had died in a police cell. No one had yet got to the bottom of what happened. Vesta’s voice trembled. ‘A white guy? A professional? With a proper job? And you think they might have knocked him off?’

  ‘I always said I should have joined the East Sussex Force, but Julie wanted to stay in town,’ said Bill. ‘So I joined Brighton and I found out pretty quickly it’s like coming up against a brick wall. They won’t let you in on nothing. That didn’t bother me. I had the dogs to see to. I prefer dogs to anyone. But, still, if you want to commit a crime in Brighton and get away with it, pick the time of the masons’ weekly meeting. There’s hardly a policeman on duty for miles. You can get away with murder easy.’

  Mirabelle found herself wondering if Detective Superintendent McGregor was a member of the lodge. During the war there had been plenty of freemasons in the service. What Bill said rang true. There had been times when she’d worried the War office was undermanned because so many men had shipped up to Holborn for lodge meetings. It was perfectly respectable. The King had been a member, after all. Still, Jack hadn’t joined. He’d been asked but he wasn’t the kind of man to join a club of any sort – he barely crossed the doorstep of the Athenaeum though his family had organised his membership. Jack always made his own way.

  ‘Freemasonry? Hobnobbing in aprons,’ he’d said dismissively. ‘It’s only mutual self-interest, Belle, and the only things I’m interested in are you and me. Oh, and winning the war, of course.’

  Still, there was no denying that plenty of brave men had taken up the invitation and not all of them had prospered as a result. There was something touching, Mirabelle always thought, when she attended the wartime funeral of a mason and his loyal brothers crowded the service.

  ‘Do you know where the lodge is in Brighton?’ she asked.