A Shot in the Dark

by Lynne Truss

  It was a very satisfactory relationship, all in all. Young Twitten, on the other hand – well, what a hopeless young constable he was. He had spent so little time in the station in his first week that even his bakery preferences (one of the first things any policeman learns about another) were as yet completely unknown.

  ‘No, I haven’t seen either of them for days,’ said Mrs Groynes, dusting, interrupting his reverie. ‘I’m sure they’re doing their best, dashing about following clues, interviewing innocent suspects, getting trains to Victoria without proper authorisation, visiting banks in the City, bothering their counterparts in the North of England, uncovering conspiracies, and who knows what else – but won’t they be in for a bleeding great shock when they get back here with their fancy theories and bits of so-called evidence – and there you’ll be, dear, holding the whole solution on one piece of paper! I can’t wait to see their crushed little faces, can you?’

  Inspector Steine nodded, happily. The sight of a crushed little face was always gratifying, somehow. The idea of Twitten’s crushed little face was somehow especially pleasant.

  ‘And all done without leaving my desk, Mrs Groynes. I am like a truth magnet. I sit here patiently, quietly, and the truth just seeks me out.’

  ‘Exactly. Well, that’s why you’re the famous one, you see. That’s why you get Policeman of the Year. Doesn’t Mr Braithwaite actually say as much in his letter? I’m sure I saw something about you being brilliant in there somewhere.’

  Steine demurred. ‘He was a self-confessed murderer and suicide, Mrs Groynes. But yes, he does say some rather kind things about me.’ He looked round. ‘Where is everybody?’

  Mrs Groynes dragged a bucket of soapy water into his office, creating a small flood, and started mopping.

  ‘Any news of Mr Jupiter in the hospital, dear?’ she said.

  Steine winced. He moved his fountain pen from one side of his desk to the other.

  ‘Don’t you think you should visit him, dear?’

  ‘Visit him? Oh, no.’ Steine didn’t like the sound of that. ‘As I’ve explained before, Mrs Groynes, he was trying to kill me.’

  ‘But why was he?’ She pushed the mop towards his feet, and he had to lift them.

  ‘I tell you, Mrs Groynes, I honestly don’t know!’

  * * *

  It was a horrible day for a Maisie-hunt. Aside from the steady rain, a stiff wind was bowling huge grey-green waves ashore, and smashing them against the shingle, sending up high arcs of cold salt spray – nearly all of it landing directly inside the collar of Brunswick’s raincoat while he waited for Ventriloquist Vince beside the seafront bandstand.

  Why hadn’t they arranged to meet somewhere warm and sheltered? Why not in Luigi’s, across the road, where he could be drinking a warming frothy coffee from one of those Pyrex cups and saucers while the wind shook the awnings outside and the rain squalled, comfortingly, against the windows?

  Of course, the last time he’d been in Luigi’s – a painful memory! – he’d been with Maisie. He had treated her to a banana split, and she’d urged him to put sixpence (his last until payday) in the jukebox, so that she could do a dance to the latest Bill Haley, with her full blue skirt flying out, and her ponytail bobbing. Everyone had looked at her. She’d been wearing a thin red belt to match her red shoes, he remembered. A short, tight sweater and a little spotted scarf.

  And now he had a horrible vision of Maisie’s body lying broken and wet in a dark alley with the rain falling pitilessly upon it. He had a vision of her being attacked by a gang of men and shouting desperately: ‘Jim! Help me!’ He saw her following some unknown man with a scar on his cheek up the staircase in the Metropole, giggling and stumbling after one too many port-and-Tizers. He felt sick. All these fates had always been on the cards for poor Maisie – a teenaged temptress who, thanks to shockingly inadequate parental supervision, consorted with members of the criminal fraternity while openly flirting with a policeman.

  By the time Vince arrived, Brunswick was weak with anxiety and guilt. It is true to say that, at this moment, any urgent duty to uncover the identity of Jack Braithwaite’s wicked murderer had been utterly displaced in Brunswick’s mind.

  ‘Vince, at last. Tell me what you know!’ he demanded.

  Vince looked as wet and worried as he did himself. ‘She no go home last night. I go off my ruddy nut, mate.’

  ‘Where was she last seen?’

  ‘She went to Hippodrome! You promised a take her, you ratbag ponce policeman, but you ruddy left her –’

  ‘I know, I know. I said I was sorry!’

  ‘Did you? That’s not what she –’

  ‘Look, I said I was sorry!’

  ‘So she go again, thass what! First person who ask! Thass the kind a girl she is!’

  The rain fell harder now – so hard that, what with the wind, Brunswick and Vince had to shout to be heard.

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘What you say?’

  ‘Who did she go with?’

  Brunswick was praying it was with one of the many girlfriends Maisie never stopped chattering about – Janet with the droopy eye from school, or Hazel next door with the calipers, or Maggie from the fish shop.

  ‘Some slim-slimey bloke,’ yelled Vince.

  ‘Oh, no.’ Brunswick pictured Maisie in the queue for the Hippodrome once more, giggling and poking her tongue out, while alongside her stood a shadowy, menacing figure in a black hat, playing with a flick-knife in his pocket.

  ‘Name of Twitty,’ yelled Vince. ‘I never see him afore.’

  Brunswick pulled a face. Twitty? What sort of a name was Twitty?

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thass funny coz he say he know you.’

  Brunswick gasped. ‘Not Twitt-EN?’ he said.

  ‘Twit-man, Twit-face, Twit-twat, something. About twenty- two years, she say. Like a toff, mate. And she go off with this ruddy ratbag Twit-features last night and then – thass it! No more Maisie! Oh, MAISIE!’

  Brunswick’s mind was racing. Twitten? As far as he was concerned, Twitten had been off the radar for at least thirty-six hours, ever since witnessing a shooting at extremely close range. He had discharged himself from hospital without any kind of treatment and had not been seen since. He was almost completely unknown. He might be capable of anything.

  ‘Tell you what, mate!’ yelled Vince, as if reading Brunswick’s mind. ‘I kill whoever done this. If my Maisie hurt, I knock his ruddy brains out!’

  ‘And I’ll help you,’ said Brunswick, grimly. ‘Oh, Maisie,’ he groaned.

  ‘Maisie!’ yelled Vince, as if hoping she could hear him.

  ‘Maisie!’ they yelled together, setting off in the rain. ‘MAISIE!’

  * * *

  There are many people who, after being struck unconscious by a professional hench-person in a London banking establishment and then transported to Brighton by van and left in a cupboard in a police station with a stolen fur coat tickling their face, would simply have given way to self-pity.

  ‘Poor me!’ they would have thought. ‘I have made a number of classic errors when dealing with an experienced criminal, and now I am going to die because I bally well know too much.’

  But Twitten did not think he had made any errors, and he also didn’t believe he was going to die. Being in this cupboard was proof enough that Mrs Groynes had different plans for him. True, her burly henchmen had been a bit rough when they bundled him out of the Albion Bank and into the van, but to be fair, they probably didn’t know any other method of bundling.

  So although it’s hard to believe, finding himself now in this pitch-black enclosed space without a lot of air, unable to move his arms or legs, Twitten felt relatively chipper. After all, he was here because he’d been right, and there could be no better consolation than that. He’d been right about the Aldersgate Stick-up being connected to Crystal’s assassination; he’d been right about Mrs Groynes being a wicked criminal.

&nb
sp; When he was finally in a position to expose her, how foolish the sergeant and Inspector Steine would feel! How they would cringe, and kick themselves! They had doubtless trusted her with all sorts of sensitive information over the years. How diminishing to Inspector Steine that Mrs Groynes had engineered every part of the Middle Street Massacre, from the shooting of young Frankie Giovedi right through to the stopping-for-ice-cream that ensured no one got out alive. And that was another thing: this blanket deception had been going on for years at the police station, whereas Twitten had penetrated the truth in just a matter of days!

  He wondered if he should try to make a noise, in the hope of rescue, but decided rather to wait and see what happened. If he interfered with Mrs Groynes’ master plan, someone might panic and hurt him. No, for the time being, he would just practise shallow nose-breathing, try not to wriggle, or to dwell on the highly disturbing fact that his clothes had been changed while he was unconscious.

  Instead, he would use the time to compile a mental list of every single law and subsection under which Mrs Groynes would eventually be charged. So far, including all the conspiracies and frauds and possession-of-weapons (as well as the robberies and murders), he could count seventeen major infringements, with a maximum combined sentence of 245 years (plus, of course, hanging).

  * * *

  There was no trace of Maisie anywhere. Her droopy-eyed best friend hadn’t seen her for a couple of days; the girl in the fish shop became hysterical at the news that she was missing, and in her distress, accidentally burned her hand on a saveloy.

  More significantly, however, there was no trace of Twitten either. At the station house, where he was supposed to be lodging, they had seen nothing of him. They had taken delivery of his suitcase, and that was all. In the absence of any other leads, Brunswick asked to see the suitcase, which had been left neatly on Twitten’s allocated bed, with its thin white pillow and standard-issue brown blanket.

  ‘Can I open it?’ he asked the station-house sergeant, who had accompanied him.

  ‘If I stay here and watch you, I don’t see why not. What’s he gone and done, then? He’s only been in town five minutes.’

  Brunswick shrugged and opened the young constable’s suitcase. It contained a few clothes, a threadbare teddy and a lot of old, filled-in I-Spy books (heavily annotated in pencil by an infant hand), inside one of which was tucked a letter from ‘Big Chief I-Spy’ to the fifteen-year-old Peregrine Twitten, thanking him for pointing out mistakes in one of the earlier titles.

  ‘Bit of a clever-clogs, is he?’ laughed the station-house sergeant, perusing the letter.

  ‘You could say that,’ said Brunswick, folding it and returning it to the book.

  At the bottom of the suitcase were more books, all about crime. Brunswick was starting to entertain doubts that Twitten could be the man he was after. The teddy, in particular, had given him pause. But then he noticed that among the books were a couple written by Twitten’s celebrated father: Inside the Head of the Law Breaker and Behind the Eyes of a Killer. He remembered his conversation with Twitten about ‘criminal psychology’. He also remembered something Steine had said to the young man, which had seemed uncalled for at the time: You might just be a clever imposter with a uniform from a theatrical costumiers. What if there was actually some truth to this accusation?

  So despite the fact that an agitated Ventriloquist Vince was waiting for him around the corner in the famous Brighton Rock tea shop, Brunswick paused to have a look. Interestingly, Behind the Eyes of a Killer fell open at the chapter ‘The Psychopath Personality’. Ten minutes later, the station-house sergeant said, awkwardly, ‘Want to take that with you, then? I can write you a chit.’ And Brunswick, not looking up, said yes.

  * * *

  What few of these people know, at this stage in the day, is that in a few hours they will have a common destination. They seem to be going their separate ways, but they are not. In the evening, they will all convene at the Hippodrome, where a daring and dramatic showdown has been planned in quite some detail for their benefit. Getting them all there is no picnic, however, even for a mind as devious and manipulative as that of Mrs Groynes.

  Constable Twitten is the only individual who can be physically shifted (by the van-and-henchmen method again) to the desired location: everyone else will have to be tricked or lured. Luckily, Inspector Steine is an easy task; Mrs Groynes already has a foolproof plan for him. Meanwhile Sergeant Brunswick will be given a last-minute tip-off by Stage Door Albert that Twitten is hiding there; and poor Constable Twitten will wake up to find himself in Jo Carver’s old dressing-room, still tied up.

  So much for the scope of Mrs Groynes’ clever plots. We then get into areas beyond her control, where chance might play a part. For who else might conceivably turn up at the Hippodrome tonight? Will Penny Cavendish rush there from her multiple curtain calls at the Theatre Royal, to tell Bobby she loves him, and beg him once more to turn himself in? Will Ben Oliver and/or Harry Jupiter make the Hippodrome their evening destination for unpredictable reasons of their own? And finally, will the hard-done-by fugitive Jo Carver make an appearance, with bloody vengeance in mind?

  For the time being, we are in the dark. But as each of our characters will be drawn, inexorably, towards the Hippodrome, it is important to emphasise that there is nothing slapdash, or airily improvised, or coincidental about all this. Mrs Groynes knows most about what will happen tonight, of course, but – while she would hate to admit this – she does not know quite everything. Meanwhile Twitten knows more than the others, but who will believe him? Sergeant Brunswick knows quite a lot, but will it be relevant? And Inspector Steine knows nothing at all, but will anyone be surprised?

  * * *

  Back at the station, however, Inspector Steine was aware of something unusual going on. He kept discovering Mrs Groynes using the telephone, and then breaking off as if caught in secret activity.

  ‘At the Hippodrome?’ he heard her saying, the first time, quite loudly. He was sitting at the desk in his own office, but could hear her through the door. ‘At seven-thirty, you say? You want me to get the inspector to the Hippodrome for seven-thirty? Yes, but how am I supposed to do that – oh my good gawd, he’s coming, I’ll call you back again, dear.’

  And then, as he entered the outer office, she randomly picked up her own handbag and started polishing it intently with a duster.

  Steine didn’t know what to make of this, so he asked for a cup of tea, took another slice of cherry Genoa and went back into his own room.

  Half an hour later, he heard her pick up the telephone again, so he went straight out, and she quickly put the receiver down, saying, ‘Wrong number, dear! Chinese laundry!’

  The next time he heard the telltale receiver-lifting, he decided to listen at the door – forgetting that, standing there, his silhouette would be plainly visible to Mrs Groynes through the frosted glass. And what he overheard was thrilling. After asking the station operator for a London number, she kept her voice low and secretive, but everything she said was still clearly audible.

  ‘Of course I’ve seen the programme, dear!’ she exclaimed. ‘I know it has to be a surprise! But he could come in at any minute!’

  Steine gulped. What was this? What programme? What surprise? He pressed his face to the glass.

  ‘I know, I know. They go in all innocent, thinking they’re going to be a guest on the Sooty Show or get their ears syringed or something, and then out jumps Eamonn Andrews with the big book, saying, “Geoffrey Beverley Wildebeest Steine, This Is Your Life!”’

  Mrs Groynes noted with satisfaction that the outline of Steine behind the door had stopped moving. She had especially enjoyed the Wildebeest bit.

  ‘Oh, I wish Sergeant Brunswick was here,’ she groaned. ‘It was him you discussed all this with in the first place, I suppose? But I don’t know where he is, and I’m not sure – look, I’ve got to be straight with you, dear, I’m not sure I can manage it. I’m just the charlady. And I had plans
for the evening, and now you want me to drop everything and get the inspector to the Hippodrome without him suspecting? Look, I won’t do it, dear. It’s beyond me. He is bound to be suspicious; he’s not an idiot. So that’s that, I’m sorry.’

  Steine closed his eyes. There was a little pause, as if Mrs Groynes was listening intently to the person on the other end. In fact, she wasn’t even bothering to hold the receiver to her ear. Steine strained to catch what was being said.

  ‘What? His mother? You’ve got his mother coming?’

  ‘Mummy?’ whispered Steine.

  ‘From Kenya?’ she said. ‘He hasn’t seen her for how long?’

  There was another agonising pause.

  ‘Oh, all right then,’ she said, at last – and, gratifyingly, saw the figure of Steine sink to a crouching position, in relief. ‘But I can’t be held responsible if he smells a rat, dear. It’s just not in my nature to dissemble.’

  She then pretended to hang up and marched straight to Steine’s office door. He had to dash awkwardly back to his desk and pick up a pen.

  ‘Inspector, dear?’ she said, standing by the open door. ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said, flustered.

  ‘I thought I heard a commotion.’

  Steine pulled a face. ‘No, not in here. I’ve been sitting here all along.’ There was a pause, while he pretended to be wondering what commotion the charlady might have heard. ‘Was there something, Mrs Groynes?’

  ‘Look, dear, yes. It’s a bit of a long shot, and just say no if you like, but I’ve got a spare ticket for the Hippodro—’

  ‘Well-I’d-be-delighted,’ said Steine, slightly too quickly.

  Mrs Groynes held her head on one side.

  ‘Are you sure, dear? You’re not suspicious that I should ask you?’

  ‘Suspicious? Why should I be? I would love to come with you, that’s all.’