Dunster

by John Mortimer

  If this was the same character, who was he? I had thought in Dandini’s that he might have been an ex-superintendent of police, out with members of the Vice Squad. Then I remembered that Lucy said that she had noticed that policemen, and those who committed serious crimes, looked, when young, like professional footballers and as they grew older they acquired the same bulky respectability, so that in the court canteen it was often difficult to tell them apart. Had a professional killer been hired in the case of Bellhanger v. Dunster? What had he been hired to do and who the hell did I suppose had hired him?

  Lucy and I were patrials of Muswell Hill. My parents lived there, as did hers, in Coniston Road. When she passed her solicitors’ exam and got her job as an assistant in a firm which did a good deal of crime, she went on living in her mother’s house (her parents had long been separated) and when we slept together she often walked over, or took a short bus ride, from her place to mine with a bag slung over her shoulder. By now my wardrobe contained some of the sombre and businesslike clothes appropriate to her profession, as well as the jeans, sweaters and T-shirts she changed into in the evenings. We weren’t really living together. There was an unspoken agreement between us that we were not committed to each other in that way, and perhaps never would be. Lucy came to me on visits, and her mother, whom I met quite often in the Mummery bar and who helped out in the ticket office, would often speak wistfully of the time when Lucy would be leaving home and starting a family, like her brother Seb, to which Lucy would say, ‘Not yet, Mum. You’ll have to put up with me for a few years yet!’ On the nights when she did stay with me, I often drove her early to the City on my way to work, just as I used to drive Tash to her tutorial college. On that morning, when I was stopping and starting down the Farringdon Road, I asked her a question about something which might have arisen from time to time in the legal profession.

  ‘I suppose there must be contract killers about?’

  ‘Plenty.’ Lucy yawned.

  ‘How much do you think they charge?’

  ‘Oh, I believe you can get a pretty decent job done for about two grand. Were you thinking of bumping off Dunster?’

  ‘Not Dunster.’ I was squeezing my way past a lorry the size of a building, which was bringing us yoghurt from Dieppe. ‘I wouldn’t pay him the compliment.’

  ‘Stop! You’re going through a red.’

  I braked hard and the man behind me tooted an indignant protest.

  ‘You are tired, aren’t you?’

  ‘Exhausted.’

  ‘Still the case?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’ll be over. That’s the thing about law cases. They finish and then you get a result. It’s always a relief, whatever it is. It’s the waiting that does for people.’

  It would all be over. By then, perhaps, it wouldn’t seem to matter very much. But it wasn’t over yet. Not by a long chalk.

  Cris had gone into the viewing-theatre early to see an episode of Social Workers that had a scene in it in which Sue O’Donnell, a central character, who had just recorded her first single, has it away with Peter, one of her clients who is on probation after a conviction for thieving motor cars. The incident takes place on a deserted Cornish beach during an illicit and unprofessional weekend. As a result of it, Sue O’Donnell’s career is put in jeopardy over several episodes – for who should be out birdwatching on the cliff top than old ‘Meanface’ Maguire, JP. But I expect you’d rather I spared you further details. Gary Penrose, scared almost equally of his wife and the Broadcasting Standards Council, had wanted Cris to see the episode. He sat through it patiently and I, who had come in late, sat behind him. When the lights went on he said, ‘Old Meanface can’t have been on the lookout for waxwings. They don’t have waxwings on the Cornish coast. You could make it guillemots. It’ll mean re-dubbing the line and playing it off his face. You could use another few feet of that rather boring sex scene.’

  ‘You don’t think the fuck scene goes too far?’ The director, a sprightly old man who always wore jeans and trainers and had been doing Social Workers longer than most people could remember, had received so much advice on the subject that he was now totally confused. ‘Gary thought we might get complaints.’

  ‘We probably will but we’re not in the business of censorship. Anyone who is reduced to getting his pleasure by watching two actors who probably can’t stand each other having make-believe sex on a draughty beach in long-shot deserves our sympathetic consideration. All right. Is that all you wanted me to see?’ Cris was uncharacteristically abrupt and seemed depressed. I said I had something else to discuss with him so we let Gary and the producer and director of Social Workers file out, no doubt pleased to have got away with their scene intact. Then Cris said, ‘Awful, isn’t it?’

  ‘You mean the case?’

  ‘No. The stuff we have to churn out. We’d just got our hands on a half-way decent subject and we had to cancel it.’

  ‘But about the case ...’

  ‘Don’t you lose sleep over it, Philip. It’s not your case, after all. I’m grateful for all you’ve done.’

  ‘Dunster’s been on to me again.’ To accuse you of hiring a man to kill him was what I should have said. But I couldn’t come out with his latest extraordinary suggestion, not as Cris and I sat close together in the small, stuffy viewing-theatre, having watched a copulation as remote and unreal as the idea of the chairman involved in a plot to murder the boy I had been to school with, the man who had removed from me the wife I continued to love. I had to find a more oblique way of disproving the charge and setting my doubts to rest. I went back to something that Dunster had told me in the garden of the War Museum. ‘He’s narrowed down the party he says blew up the church. You and three others. That’s going to be his case. We ought to be prepared to deal with it.’

  ‘That Rottweiler of a QC we’ve hired, that Roger Stuffington, or whatever he calls himself, he’ll deal with that.’

  ‘But I’d just like to get the facts clear in my own mind, in case Dunster gets on to me again. You said you’d gone somewhere to the south of Pomeriggio when it happened.’ I had never thought the day would come when I should be cross-examining Cris like a barrister, even though I was avoiding the direct question.

  ‘That’s right. Just north of Monte di Speranza.’ Cris looked amused at my new role.

  ‘What did you go down there to do? I mean, was it anything to do with explosives?’

  ‘Yes. Now you come to mention it.’

  ‘What? But if you can’t remember ...’

  ‘I can remember exactly. A German supply store. Quite a successful mission.’

  ‘Who did you take with you?’

  ‘Those three chaps.’

  I felt a surge of excitement, as though I were getting near some truth, although I didn’t know what it was or even if it would be the truth I wanted.

  ‘That was the sergeant who died and the lance corporal who deserted. Natty Suiting?’

  ‘Suiting was what we called him. He was so untidy. Remember?’

  ‘Yes.’ I remembered everything that anybody told me about the case, perhaps too much.

  ‘Who was the third?’

  ‘The fireworks man himself The big bang expert.’

  ‘The demolition specialist.’ It was the man Dunster was trying to find, the one he said he had a lead to. ‘What was he called?’

  ‘Lester Maddocks’ The name meant nothing. ‘I’m not sure where any of this gets us.’ Cris got up then, out of the soft stall where I had often snoozed during Megapolis productions. He stretched, an old man whose limbs grew stiff if he sat for too long in one position, and took a little confined exercise, like a prisoner pacing his cell I looked up at him as he stood in front of the white screen that had no picture on it, and asked if he could describe the dynamiter

  ‘I watched him carefully enough, laying his charges and setting his fuses. He was young. Of course we all were.’

  ‘Big?’

  ‘Yes. The burly sort Bi
g chest and lots of muscles. Light on his feet, though, for such a heavy chap. I believe he’d done a certain amount of boxing, amateur nights round the East End where he came from. He was hoping to get into the profession when we all got back from the war.’

  ‘Justin Glover’s going to have to try to find him. He’ll be an important witness.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Cris sounded uncertain. Then we fell silent. Cris was right, it wasn’t my case. All the same I asked my last question.

  ‘Do you remember if he had a broken nose?’

  ‘Not when I knew him. I don’t think so.’

  And when you knew him, I don’t suppose he had a red Cortina either, I thought in an irreverent moment.

  I did something that I thought I’d never do in my whole life. I went back to Dandini’s club.

  It hadn’t changed, or improved, in any way. The pale doorman was still leaning against the wall with his hands sunk deep into his trouser pockets. Once more he asked me to sign the book, which seemed to be the only formality needed to confer immediate membership. There was a girl behind the bar, neither Tracy nor Tina but a pretty and panic-stricken brunette whose label introduced her to the empty room as Nerys. She was only too anxious to pour me a dry white wine, but searched for the bottle, the glass and the corkscrew with trembling hands, knocking things over and whispering ‘Sugar!’ to herself, as though the bar were packed with important customers, all waiting to be served. She said she was new there, very new, and had never heard of a member called Lester Maddocks.

  That day I had called Justin Glover, not to tell him what Dunster had said to me outside Mrs Oakshott’s bathroom but to see how he was doing in his hunt for witnesses. He said he had spoken to Cris, who had given him the names of the men he was with ‘doing the other job when the Germans blasted Pomeriggio’. He knew Sergeant Blaker was dead and they were doing their best to find Maddocks, the demolitions expert. The deserter in the Apennines wasn’t going to present too much of a problem. They had traced an old man, born in England, running a bar in Maltraverso, who now called himself Andreini. There was only one slightly worrying thing. They were having absolutely no luck in finding a former Austrian refugee who used the name Llewellyn. An inquiry agent had been round numberless garages in and around Cardiff. Llewellyns were extremely thick on the ground but none of them seemed to have any connection with Austria, let alone Pomeriggio. They were checking voters’ lists and trying to get something from the immigration authorities. They were also going through the Public Record Office. If that failed they would look up the old intelligence files in the Ministry of Defence. ‘Cris knows someone in the MOD.’ I thought how that sentence would enrage Dunster if he ever heard it spoken. Justin Glover said he hoped to have some good news for us soon and rang off.

  I could have left it all to him. I could have said, ‘Dunster’s got an idea that Cris is trying to kill him.’ I could have asked him to find Lester Maddocks because I had a terrible suspicion that he was a hit man employed by Justin Glover’s distinguished client. I didn’t say any of that. I wanted to find out the truth for myself and decide what to do about it. It was the sort of positive decision which I didn’t, up till then, believe it was in my nature to take.

  ‘I remember you, don’t I, dear? Didn’t you come here with the old Major? We don’t see a lot of him nowadays. All right, is he?’

  ‘As a matter of fact he’s been ill.’

  ‘Has he, the naughty old darling? Nothing serious?’

  ‘Yes, it is rather.’

  ‘Let’s hope he gets better soon.’ Marcia, known to Jaunty as Marion, had arrived at work, got into her black fishnet stockings and, after these preliminary greetings, asked me if I’d like to order. In return I asked her if she often saw the group of men who had been drinking together the night I was there with Jaunty, in particular a large man with a bald head and a broken nose – at which description Marcia laughed.

  ‘Why, dear? You getting married or something?

  For some extraordinary reason I thought of Lucy with a pang of guilt. What did this Marcia know about me? ‘No. Why ever do you ask?’

  ‘Weddings. Funerals. Taking out some new young bird you want to impress. That old chap’s got limos for all occasions. He’s always trying to get us to recommend them to our customers. But they’re not all the limo type, to be honest. Not those that we get in here.’

  ‘Do you have his address? I suppose I might need a limo some time.’ Need one for what? Marriage, death or just to impress a young bird and lead her to believe I was the sort that owned a Roller with a chauffeur in a cap? The kindly Marcia was now hunting behind the bar, clicking her tongue and accusing Nerys of having moved everything around, and then telling her to just keep calm dear when Nerys broke a small, pink glass giraffe. They searched through cards from members and staff on holiday, from a Day and Night Visit-U massage service, afternoon hotels, adult cinemas and suppliers of exotic underwear. Lodged between a bottle of blue Bols and a china donkey wearing a sombrero they found the well-thumbed card of Cupid Cars: LUXURY LIMOS OUR SPRCIALITY. DINE, WINE OR WED IN STYLE. The address was Allenby Mews off Inverness Terrace in Bayswater, and you could no doubt die in style with them also.

  So I went in search of Cupid Cars, only a short taxi ride from the Dandini club in Mayfair, on a quest which seemed to be proving almost too easy. The next stage, assuming I was able to meet Mr Maddocks, was likely to be more difficult and, as the taxi drove up between the darkness of the Park and the glitter of lights in the trees in front of the Dorchester, I rehearsed various conversational openings, ranging from ‘Have you got a small and unostentatious Rolls in which I might get married to a young solicitor with criminal connections?’ to ‘Who paid you to shut up Jaunty and try to knock off Dunster?’

  Lucy had told me about the allegedly legal operations which criminals use as a cover. With the small thieves and petty burglars it’s window-cleaning; minor East End gangs run mini-cab businesses; and it’s only those who earn the attention of the Serious Crimes Squad who go into limos. I thought of all this as the cab turned down Queensway, past the bright lights of Greek restaurants, Asian grocers’ shops, newsagents who sold newspapers in all the languages produced by the Tower of Babel – and soft porn which could do without words altogether – and we were in striking distance of Allenby Mews. Looking down it I could see, in the shadows, two or three Rolls-Royces parked close to the wall, but no red Cortina. I paid off my driver and walked down the cobbles towards a light shining from the office window of Cupid Cars.

  I knocked and, getting no encouragement, pushed open the door of a room in which three elderly men in dark suits were playing cards under a glaring strip-light. On a side table their chauffeur’s caps stood among a mess of used take-away boxes, sandwiches packaged in plastic triangles, paper cups, beer cans and Coke bottles. Their faces bore the sullen expression of men who would tell you that the recession is worse than any bloody politician is going to admit, that the Americans aren’t coming this year and most of their regular clients have gone bankrupt, anyway. They would probably say this as they drove you with your bride away from the wedding. Hanging on the wall was a large, pink, naked doll, equipped with a silver cardboard bow and a quiver of arrows. I wondered who, in this melancholy firm, had spent time decorating Cupid.

  I said, is Mr Maddocks about?’

  ‘Who’s he?’ The eldest card-player might just have been old enough to have fought in the war. He was a thin, old man with the long face and tragic eyes of the Middle East, an Arab or an Israeli.

  ‘Isn’t he your boss? I’ve got a complaint to make.’

  ‘What complaint?’

  ‘One of your cars broke down at my wedding. I’ve written four times and got absolutely no satisfaction.’ My powers of invention amazed me.

  ‘Mr Loughborough’s our boss,’ a fat driver said. It wasn’t a warm evening but he was sweating and had a bunch of Kleenex on the table beside him. ‘You must have wrote to the wrong bloke, Mister.’
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br />   There was a door with a frosted-glass pane at the end of the room. Behind it there was a light and the sound of a telephone ringing. A deep, indistinct voice could be heard answering it.

  ‘Could I speak to Mr Loughborough, then?’ An outraged and inconvenienced bridegroom wouldn’t have left without seeing the top man.

  ‘You can’t speak to him, no,’ the fat driver said, and the third man, of whom I have no clear recollection except that he had a dodgy eye which might have made his left turns erratic, added, ‘On duty.’ At which moment the door opened and the big, bald man with the broken nose came in. He was wearing a white shirt and the trousers of a suit held up by braces, which was Cris’s working outfit.

  ‘There’s a job for you, Jack,’ the man whose name might just as well have been Loughborough said to the sad Middle-Eastemer. ‘Pick up 9.30 Launceston Place, W8, over to the Savoy Grill and wait as long as you’re needed. Who’s this?’

  ‘Bloke that’s come to complain about one of our bridals.’ The fat driver spoke before I could introduce myself.

  ‘Was it the white Roller or the Bentley?’ the boss asked.

  ‘It was the white one.’

  ‘All right, then. You’d better come in here.’ He stood aside and let me go past him into the room, then he shut the door.

  ‘I’ll just take a few details. Do have a seat, Mr -?’

  ‘Progmire. Philip Progmire. I work for Sir Crispin Bellhanger.’

  He sat at a desk in front of a row of telephones which didn’t ring very often. On it was a framed photograph of a couple with three children, standing under a blue sky in some sunny spot. The man in the photograph also had the features of a younger, less battered Roman emperor, but his nose was unbroken.

  ‘Am I right in thinking,’ I said, ‘that you’re Lester Maddocks? An old soldier from the SAS?’