‘When? Not sure. But I can tell you where ’cos it was right here. It was late on one night, and I’d slipped out for a quick fag when I saw Steve heading off home…’
‘He worked late evenings then?’ interrupted Joe.
Bert laughed.
‘This time of year, oh yes. Everything’s got to be im -maculate at the Hoo. That mad Scots bugger’s got his lads tidying up behind the last players out on the course and they’re still coming in after nine in the summer.’
‘Did you talk to him?’
‘Yes. He came over and bummed a ciggy off me. I always told him it was an unhealthy habit for a young man, but he said he’d give it up when I dropped dead.’
‘You talk about anything interesting?’
Bert sucked in the remaining inch of his cigarette as though inhaling memory.
‘That’s right,’ he exclaimed. ‘Now I think about it, it was that very same night! The one when Mr Postgate came into the bar with the ball just as Syd Cockernhoe was telling the story of how Mr Porphyry had nicked the match from him. Of course the whole place was buzzing with speculation after that, so naturally I filled young Steve in.’
‘How did he take it?’
‘He said it had to be a mistake ’cos any story about Mr Porphyry cheating was a load of old cobblers. He really rates Mr Porphyry, does Steve.’
‘And then?’
‘Then I had to get back inside.’
‘And Steve?’
‘He went off, I suppose…no, hang about. He asked me something…what was it? He asked me if Mr Rowe was still in the bar. I said yes, he was, drinking with Mr Surtees. And then I went in.’
‘How did Steve usually get home?’
‘He had this scooter thing, one of those that folds up next to nothing. We used to joke you could get close to twenty mph on it, downhill with a following wind, and Steve would say that one day when he’d made it rich, he’d turn up in the car park here with a machine that would make the rest of them there look like old rust-buckets.’
‘Did he used to leave it in the car park?’
‘Don’t be silly! No, he used to stick it round the back of the greenkeeper’s shed.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Carry on down the service road there. It’s on the left. That it?’
‘Just one thing more. This Rules Committee – the Four Just Men, isn’t that what they call it? I know Tom Latimer’s on it. Who’re the other three?’
Bert considered, saw no harm in answering this and said, ‘Mr Surtees, Mr Lillihall, and Mr Plimpton.’
‘Arthur Surtees, the lawyer, that would be?’
‘Right,’ said Bert. ‘Him and Mr Latimer call the shots, the other two are just there to make up the numbers. At least, that’s what I hear. But I’ve not said anything to you, right?’
‘Of course you haven’t, Bert. Cheers, mate.’
‘You take care now, Joe. One of the things I haven’t said to you is, there’s some mean bastards in this club. Cheers.’
Joe would have liked a list of names, but Bert had vanished into the building and in any case Joe guessed that the only response he would have got would have been, ‘Next question.’
He set off down the service road in search of the green-keeper’s shed.
It took some finding, not because it was obscure but because it turned out to be a shed in the same way that Balmoral is a holiday cottage. Originally an old barn in the same creamy stone as the clubhouse, it stood foursquare and solid in a small copse of beech trees. Converted into a country dwelling, it would have made a developer a small fortune. There was no one in sight, so Joe wandered down the side of the building and round the back. No scooter here, but there was a large patch of oily grass against the rear wall.
Before he could examine it closer, a voice grated, ‘Help you?’
Joe turned to find himself the object of a suspicious gaze.
As the gaze was emanating from the sun-ravaged features of Davie Davie, and as Joe was poking around behind the building in which presumably the head greenkeeper kept all that was most precious to him, he couldn’t blame the guy for being suspicious.
Joe had to make a decision. Did Davie, like Bert, know he was a PI? Or was he still under the impression he was a chum of the YFG’s?
He made his choice and said, ‘Oh hello, Davie. Just having a look around while I’m waiting for Mr Porphyry and I seem to have got a bit lost.’
It sounded pretty stilted to Joe, but most of what Davie heard at the Hoo must sound pretty stilted to his Caledonian ears.
He said, ‘If it’s the clubhouse ye’re wanting, ye’ll need to walk back along the track a ways.’
‘Thanks. Some places I’ve been, this would have done for the clubhouse, yeah?’
‘Aye, well, it does the job, sir,’ said Davie with the modest pride of a man who knew his worth.
The sir confirmed to Joe that his cover remained in place here at least.
As the Scot turned away, Joe took a pound coin out of his pocket, palmed it, then stooped and said, ‘Hey, it’s my lucky day. Oh shoot, it’s a bit oily.’
He held the coin up and ostentatiously began to wipe it with his handkerchief. Davie again was regarding him suspiciously, but this time it was the suspicion of a Scot who knew it was written somewhere in the Old Testament that he would be able to spot lost money in his back yard long before any poncy Anglo of no matter what shade.
Joe quickly moved from the coin to the oil which he was sure the greenkeeper would have spotted.
‘Seems to be a patch of the stuff down there,’ he said indicating the area he’d been examining when interrupted. ‘One of your mowers must be leaking or something.’
‘No way!’ Davie snorted indignantly. ‘One of my lads parks his bike there and that’s what’s got the leak. When I was his age I’d have had it sorted in two jinks of a cat’s tale, but nowadays they’ve nae pride in what they possess. It all comes too easy, that’s my way of thinking.’
‘But I bet you don’t let him get away with anything when he’s working on the course,’ said Joe. ‘From what I’ve seen, it’s immaculate.’
‘Aye, they leave their standards behind and work to mine once they’re out there,’ said Davie. ‘To give him his due, this laddie did a fair day’s work when I made him put his mind to it.’
‘Did? He’s gone, has he? I only ask ’cos the oil seems quite fresh.’
This was pushing it a bit, but golf club greenkeepers have to get used to vacuous waffle from their members and Davie replied, ‘Aye, he took off a few days back, but his machine was around till yesterday, I’m sure. He must have snuck in to collect it, scairt of running into me likely, the way he let me down. I’ll be hard put to get a decent replacement this time of year.’
‘Plenty of lads out of work would surely jump at the chance,’ said Joe.
‘You’d think so, but most of them are likely sunning themselves on a holiday beach, and those that aren’t don’t like to get their hands dirty,’ said Davie sourly. ‘Good day to ye.’
Joe walked away, his mind buzzing like the mysterious scooter and probably making as much smoke.
Exactly a week ago, the morning after Porphyry’s disputed victory in his Vardon Cup match, Waring had risen, eaten a hearty breakfast, walked out of No 15 Lock-keeper’s Lane and vanished off the face of the earth.
The night before, he had been given a lift home by someone driving a silver Audi 8, almost certainly Colin Rowe.
His motor scooter had remained here behind the green-keeper’s shed till yesterday or maybe early this morning when someone had removed it. Also this morning someone had turned up at Lock-keeper’s Lane to collect Waring’s belongings from his lodgings, and pay his rent up to date. That person, or rather those persons, had also been in a silver Audi 8 identified by young Liam Tremayne as the same in which he’d seen Waring travelling the evening before his disappearance.
And Colin Rowe’s Audi was presently standing in the Hoo car par
k with mud on its tyres and an oil stain on its boot carpet.
This needed a bit of thinking about.
He glanced at his watch, and realized that he’d need to do his thinking on the way to the airport.
His phone rang. The display read Butcher. He looked around guiltily, wondering if the Hoo embargo on mobiles extended here. But no one came running out of the trees shaking their fists and brandishing their niblicks, so he put it to his ear and said, ‘Hi, Butcher.’
‘Sixsmith, what are you doing? Basking by the hotel pool, charging your pint glasses of sangria to King Rat’s account?’
‘No. I’m still here.’
‘Still in Luton? Oh, Joe, Joe, you do like living dangerously. His Majesty won’t like you changing his plans.’
‘It’s just the timetable I’ve changed. I’m catching a later plane. Just setting out for the airport.’
‘Oh good. Then call in here as you’re passing. Something I want to show you.’
‘What is it? I’m a bit pushed. Couldn’t you just…’
‘Got to go now, Sixsmith. See you soon.’
She switched off.
‘Oh shoot,’ said Joe.
There had to be a trick to ignoring bossy women, but Aunt Mirabelle hadn’t taught him it. He hurried back to the car park.
Lightning Strikes Twice
At the Law Centre, Butcher saw him straightaway, which had to mean something.
She said, ‘When I got in this morning my fax had spewed out a lot of stuff about the Royal Hoo.’ ‘Yeah, I gave Porphyry your number.’ ‘You not got a fax of your own, Sixsmith?’ ‘Course I have. Only it doesn’t work too good.’ Merv Golightly, who’d been present in Joe’s office when the machine churned out fifty pages of midnight blackness, had said, ‘Joe, whoever sold you that fax got the vowel wrong. Why didn’t you come to me? I know this guy who’s going bankrupt…’
‘In any case,’ Joe went on to Butcher, ‘this was stuff you wanted to look at.’
‘Which I’ve done. Have to say that when old Porphyry set up the club, he really tied up the loose ends so the family kept control.’
‘You’re not going to start talking all that legal mumbo-jumbo to me, Butcher?’ said Joe fearfully.
‘No, Joe. I’ll give you the idiot child’s version,’ she said. ‘Grandpapa Porphyry got his lawyers to tie up the business side of things. Members are shareholders, with the current head of the Porphyry family the majority shareholder. Any shares owned by ordinary members – that is, members other than said Porphyry – are non-transferable. They cannot be sold outside the club or inherited. On the death of a member, his share reverts to the club, where it remains in a share-pool till such time as a new member is elected who must purchase his qualifying share at its current market value, which, as there is no market, is decided by a small committee known as the Prop, which is short for Proportionality. You still with me?’
‘I was till this last bit,’ said Joe.
‘Do pay attention. The intention is that new members should be chosen for their clubbability not their wealth, and charged not on a fixed scale but according to what they can afford to pay.’
‘Got you!’ said Joe. ‘You mean like if I got elected, they’d say, Welcome aboard, Joe, you’re such a nice guy we really want you here at the Hoo. Here’s your membership share, that will be a fiver please. Whereas if Sir Monty Wright had got elected it would have cost him half a mill maybe.’
‘You’re doing well,’ said Butcher approvingly. ‘But don’t get your hopes up; there’s an annual fee which you could probably afford, only you wouldn’t be able to eat, drink, pay your rent, or buy new clothes, which in your case might not be such a bad thing.’
‘You ain’t no fashion plate yourself,’ retorted Joe. ‘So OK, everything’s neat and tidy, that what you got me here to tell?’
‘More or less. But what one lawyer puts away neat and tidy another lawyer can usually find a way to muss up, if he or she puts her mind to it. If at any time there should be more than four membership shares floating around this pool – because, say, the Almighty decided He’d had enough of these privileged prats sunning themselves on their exclusive terrace and took a lot of them out with one of His thunderbolts – in that case members are allowed to buy extra shares which they can hold in trust for any future member they themselves may care to propose, the advantage of this being that in such a case such a proposition would be decided by simple majority without option of blackball.’
‘Now I’m starting to hurt,’ said Joe. ‘Why?’
‘To keep numbers up, I suspect. And also because grandpapa Porphyry didn’t trust his friends not to become such a complacent, snobbish, coterie-forming bunch of twats that they’d end up blackballing the club out of existence.’
‘Butcher, I got a plane to catch,’ said Joe looking at his watch. ‘And if I don’t catch it, I’m going to have to explain myself to King Rat. I’m already running late, so can we cut to the chase here?’
‘OK. Termination of membership. Possible reasons: death, resignation, expulsion. In each and all of these cases, the membership shares go into the pool. Possible reasons for expulsion: anything which in the judgement of the Committee is deemed to have brought the club into disrepute. So, a judgement call, except in one particular instance. There is one crime regarded as heinous beyond all mitigation of circumstance or misfortune. If a man is found to have cheated at golf, the penalty is instant expulsion, without debate or appeal.’
Finally Joe was starting to see where Butcher was going.
‘So if Mr Porphyry was found guilty, he’d be chucked out and his shares would go into this pool thing? But I mean, it’s his club, or at least it’s his family’s club…’
‘Wrong,’ said Butcher. ‘The club belongs to the shareholders who are the members. The fact that there is a majority shareholder who calls the shots is immaterial. This is where Grandpapa Porphyry’s neat and tidy arrangements fall down. I’m sure he was sufficiently a realist to know that nothing lasts for ever. Everything changes. It might even be that eventually he would have a descendant who didn’t care for golf and wanted to realize this particular asset. That would be fine, a matter of commercial choice. What he didn’t envisage was that one of his descendants could be caught cheating at the game and expelled from the Hoo.’
‘And this means all of Mr Porphyry’s shares go into this pool? And the other members can buy them up? Shoot, Butcher, would someone really do this to a nice guy like Christian just so they can get one of their chums into the Hoo without risk of blackball?’
The lawyer looked at him in amazement then began to laugh.
‘Joe, Joe,’ she said. ‘This isn’t about membership of a stupid golf club, it’s not about blackballing – though I’ve a strong suspicion that a blackball is where it all started. The point is that if one guy or a group of like-minded guys get their hands on Porphyry’s shares, then they’ll have a majority holding and they can do with the club whatever they damn well like.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as apply for development permission, which with the right connections isn’t too hard to obtain. God, the properties already scattered around the Hoo site must be worth millions on the open market. As for development, think what an expanding supermarket chain might be willing to pay for a chunk of that land!’
‘You mean, Wright-Price? Sir Monty?’ said Joe aghast. ‘You saying Sir Monty’s set this thing up just to get his own back ’cos he thinks Christian blackballed him?’
‘I think that getting Porphyry disgraced at the same time as adding a lot more dosh to his already obscene bank balance would be an irresistible combination to that nasty bastard,’ snapped Butcher. ‘And don’t give me any sentimental crap about his charitable works and all the good he’s done that sad football club of yours. When you see a smile on the face of the tiger, you need to ask yourself what it’s been eating!’
Joe didn’t argue – with Butcher in full spate, argument was futile – but he
couldn’t agree. OK, Sir Monty was sharp. You didn’t get to be a multi-millionaire without cutting corners. But when it came to sporting morality, the Luton chairman made Aunt Mirabelle look like an estate agent. He thought one of City’s players was diving, that got a last-chance warning. One more dive and it didn’t matter if you were a full international and player of the year, you were out! How could a guy like that be mixed up in framing a fellow golfer for cheating?
Joe’s head was in a whirl. From an objective, professional point of view, his investigation had made great strides forward, but he wished with all his heart he’d somehow managed to catch that early flight to Spain with Mimi.
Which reminded him. He glanced at his watch and began to rise.
‘Where are you going?’ demanded Butcher.
‘The airport, I told you…’
‘Sixsmith, you are unbelievable! Haven’t you been listening to me? I’ve laid it out for you why I think your client’s been set up! And if I’m right and this all leads back to Sir Monty bloody Wright, ask yourself who helped him get where he is today. Ratcliffe King, that’s who, the man who’s fixed it to get you out of the country. And all you can do on hearing this is rush off to the airport to make sure he’s not disappointed!’
Joe said, ‘Sounds a pretty healthy option to me. In fact, only last night you were telling me that I’d be mad to cross King Rat once I’d made a deal with him.’
‘So when have I expressed belief in your sanity? You’ve got responsibilities to your client here, Joe.’
‘Yeah? Well, Mr King’s a client too. His job’s urgent. The golf-club thing ain’t. I mean, this committee won’t be considering Porphyry’s case for another couple of weeks, and I’ll be back long before then.’
‘I’d bet Christian Porphyry’s thinking it’s a bit more urgent today,’ said Butcher. ‘You’ve not seen the Crier?’
She produced a copy of the tabloid which appealed to those local readers who found the Bugle too intellectual. Under the headline STORM IN A TEE CUP? was a brief account of the cheating accusations levelled at Porphyry. Joe could almost hear the glee in the last sentences: Only a week ago the engagement was announced (though not in the Crier’s classifieds!) of Mr Porphyry to Tiff, only daughter of Bruce Emerson, proprietor of the South Bedfordshire Bugle. We look forward to following the affair in the Bugle’s pages.
The Roar of the Butterflies Page 15
