One Fight at a Time

by Jeff Dowson

“That’s right,” Grover said.

  “You haven’t gone home yet then.”

  “On my way.”

  “Pints or halves?” Mr Longworth asked.

  “Pints,” Grover said.

  Mr Longworth produced two pint bottles of MacEwans India Pale Ale.

  “That’ll be one and ten,” he said.

  Grover gave him half a crown and received his eight pence change.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Thank you for helping out,” Mr Longworth said as Grover opened the shop door, cradling the two bottles with his left arm. “We couldn’t have walloped Hitler without you.”

  “It was a privilege Mr Longworth.”

  “Safe journey back across the pond.”

  Grover thanked him again and left the shop.

  Halfway back across the park, he realised he was not alone. Ahead of him, the path swung right through some shrubbery, before it straightened out again and headed directly for the Grove Avenue exit. He was moving through an arrowhead shaped, grassy space, narrowing towards the point of the arrow. The bushes ahead came together to fringe the path. He looked behind him. The path curved away to the left. He looked ahead again. A few steps further, he would be among the shrubbery and totally screened from the perimeter of the park.

  To his right, there was a cast iron park bench. He stopped beside it, put his two bottles on the seat and waited.

  Nothing and no one stirred.

  Grover called out, “Come on. Let’s do this. I’m looking forward to a drink.”

  There was a rustling to his left at 10 o’clock and a man stepped out into view. He held up both hands, knuckles towards Grover and rotated his wrists. Silver and gold knuckle dusters caught the moonlight. To Grover’s right, at 2 o’clock, a man appeared holding an iron bar about two feet long. He threw it up into the air, let it twirl and caught it again. The action was supposed to impress. Ahead and blocking the path, was the biggest character of the three. He was holding a length of bicycle chain.

  Grover, the trained killer, took stock.

  The man with the knuckle dusters looked like he weighed more than the other two put together. But he was carrying too much weight and was probably slow. Face to face, one to one, he would go down easily. The juggler with the iron bar was tall, lean and possibly agile. He would be tougher, but Grover out-weighed and out-massed him and if he got inside the man’s reach, he would go down too. The bicycle chain hard case was too far away to properly assess, but he would be last into the fray. Grover had never come up against a swinging bicycle chain, but he reasoned it would get in the way in a group situation. The guy would have to hang back a bit.

  The trained killer calculated the odds.

  Even at three to one, his assailants were being optimistic.

  Duster Man tried first. He came in on Grover’s left. Swung high and hard. Grover swayed back out of the way. Just enough. The knuckles came close. He felt the airstream brush across his chin. He straightened up and leaned forward. The force of Duster Man’s right arm had pulled his shoulder through ninety degrees. His weight was in the wrong place, way out to Grover’s right and he could not recover quickly enough. Grover bent his knees slightly, balled his fist and slammed it into Duster Man’s right kidney. He yelled and staggered away a couple of steps. As Iron Bar Man swung from Grover’s right, towards the side of his face. Grover ducked under the swing and charged, like the line backer he had been in Baker Company’s football team. And kept on going. Iron man back-pedalled into a rhododendron bush and dropped his iron bar. Grover picked it up. Duster Man was back again, closing on him from behind. He waited until he could smell the man’s sweat, then spun round one hundred and eighty degrees, transferring all his upper body weight and power into the swing. The iron bar hit Duster Man between the fifth and sixth ribs. Grover heard them break. Duster Man yelled again and flung his arms wide. Grover swung the bar upwards in an arc, like the follow through in a golf tee shot. The bar broke the man’s jaw, drove his bottom set of teeth into the roof of his mouth and whipped his neck up and backwards. He was out of the game. The rhododendron bush rustled and swished behind him. Iron Bar Man had got to his knees and he was on the rise. Grover brought the bar down hard on to the top of the man’s head. He was unconscious before he could feel the pain. He fell back into the rhododendron’s embrace and disappeared in the foliage.

  So far, the man with the bicycle chain had made no contribution to the contest. In fact, he seemed not to have moved at all. Grover slid the iron bar forwards in his right hand until he got the balance he needed and stepped towards the last man standing. Stone paper scissors. Grover figured that iron bar might beat bicycle chain. So did the man in front of him, who backed away speedily, then turned and ran for the Grove Avenue gate.

  Grover threw the iron bar into the shrubbery on his left, moved back to the park bench and picked up the bottles of India Pale Ale. The man with the knuckle dusters and the broken face was lying on his back groaning. Obviously in no condition to talk. The man in the rhododendron bush was unconscious. And was going to be that way for a while. Grover decided not to wait around.

  He walked out of the park and was back in Gladstone Street five minutes later. He rang the shop doorbell. Arthur opened the door. Grover stepped into the shop and held out the bottles of beer for inspection. Arthur nodded his approval and closed the door.

  “You look a bit flushed,” he said.

  “Three guys jumped me in Victoria Park.”

  “What?... Why?”

  “Because we’ve annoyed somebody.”

  “Were you hurt?”

  “No. They were big and wide and thought they were tough, but they were second rate. I got two of them and the third one ran away.”

  Arthur led the way into the kitchen. Ellie and Zoe were sitting at the kitchen table. Zoe had finished explaining what was likely to happen the following morning.

  “The boy has just been attacked,” Arthur announced to the women.

  Grover responded swiftly to the expressions on their faces.

  “I’m fine.” He handed the pale ale to Arthur. “It’s actually good news.”

  Zoe understood and nodded in agreement. Ellie pushed her chair back and rose to her feet.

  “Why is it good news? I don’t understand.”

  Zoe explained.

  “We seem to have rattled somebody’s cage. It’s unfortunate that he, or she, felt impelled to send three employees to give a message to Ed. But it means that he, or she, no longer believes Harry’s murder conviction is a given, and is concerned we might get to the truth. There’s a hole in the evidence bag somewhere. We simply have to find it.”

  Arthur put the bottles down on the sideboard, opened a drawer and rummaged around for a bottle opener.

  “Won’t the police realise that too?” Ellie asked. “As soon as we report this to them.”

  “They might,” Zoe said. “And it might give DCI Bridge pause for thought. But they will still feel they have enough to go into court with.”

  “We are going to report this nonetheless,” said Ellie.

  Zoe looked at Grover. He was silent.

  “We are, aren’t we?” Ellie asked him.

  Grover remained silent

  Arthur gave up on his bottle opener search and joined in the lobby.

  “We’re not, are we?”

  Grover explained why.

  “There’s no point. I’ve no idea who these men were, or where they came from. Meanwhile, Bridge is already suspicious of me. He doesn’t want me poking around in a live police case and I don’t want to add to my profile. A US soldier throwing his weight around in an English suburb, however defensible, will please neither the local cops nor the US Army. I’ll get sent back to Fairford and then home on the next plane.”

  Ellie sat down again. Arthur resumed his search for the bottle opener. Zoe wound up the discussion.

  “I’m hoping that tomorrow morning will be a reality check for Harry. Enough to make him tell
the Magistrate where he was and what he was doing, last Saturday night.”

  There was silence again, underscored by the rattling of cutlery in the sideboard drawer. Nobody wanted to push on with the question begging to be asked – what if Harry doesn’t tell the Magistrate where he was?

  “Ah. Found it,” Arthur said.

  Zoe reached across the table with her right hand and laid it on Ellie’s arm.

  “We will do our best to make this work out.”

  Ellie looked at her.

  “We haven’t talked about your firm’s fee.”

  “This is off the books until we see what happens tomorrow.”

  Ellie swallowed, sniffed and stood up.

  “Let’s have some more tea.”

  Arthur opened the first bottle of pale ale.

  “And let’s drink to success,” he said.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Zoe managed to find a parking space in Nelson Street. She locked the Riley and walked around the corner to the Bridewell. She was wearing a neatly tailored black skirt and matching jacket, with a long collar white shirt underneath it. Ready for business. Under the blue police lamp, she stopped and looked at her watch. 8.45. She took a deep breath and stepped through the doorway.

  Sergeant Albright was doing duty on the desk. In his early 50s and with thirty years in the job, he knew he was going no higher. But he was a solid, reliable copper, who made the downstairs floor run like clockwork and enjoyed his role as the first face of the station.

  “Morning Mrs Easton,” he said.

  “Sergeant...”

  “I believe you have come to talk with young Mr Morrison.”

  “Yes indeed.”

  There were two phones on the desk. One an outside line, the other an internal pbx phone with two rows of buttons. Albright picked up the receiver and pressed one of them. He waited a moment, then told Constable Martin at the other end that Mrs Easton had arrived.

  “Yes. Straight away please,” he said.

  He put the receiver back in its cradle.

  “Constable Martin is coming to fetch you. Miss Palmer’s already in there. We have the crack team on the case.”

  “I hope so.”

  Less than a minute later, Zoe was talking with Suzy Palmer in a tiny office. Constable Martin stood outside in the corridor. Next to him was the door to the interrogation room, inside which Harry sat at a table, under the watchful eye of the other copper on the cell roster, Constable Frears.

  Suzy Palmer was, as Sergeant Albright had said, one of the smartest solicitors in the city. She was in her early 40s, with long brown hair and green eyes which did not miss a trick. Like Zoe, she was dressed in a suit, this one grey, with a light blue shirt under the jacket.

  “Harry says he was at the pictures when the murder took place,” she said. “Watching The Blue Lamp.”

  “Is he telling the truth?”

  “Probably not. But he knows the plot scene by scene. If he hasn’t seen it, he’s certainly done his homework.”

  “Do you think he murdered his friend?”

  “Again, probably not. If he sticks to his story, in spite of his admission that the murder weapon belongs to him and that he was in the flat after the murder took place, you might save him from the hangman. But there is something very wrong at the heart of all this. And if the prosecution dig it out and we’re not prepared, Harry could still get a long custodial sentence.”

  “Okay,” Zoe said, “Let’s talk to him together.”

  *

  At the same moment, at the end of a track up above the Avon Gorge in Leigh Woods, Robbie McAllister, has-been middleweight contender, was sitting in the driving seat of his Triumph Mayflower.

  Breathing his last.

  The window was wound down and the breeze stirred the hair behind his ears. He had bought the Mayflower new, for five hundred and twenty-five pounds, because it was sold as the small car with the up-market image. He could not afford cash, so he was paying on the never-never and he still had a couple of years to go. That no longer mattered of course, he had only a couple of minutes left.

  The results of last night’s hammering were all over his face. He had cuts above both eyes, purple bruises underneath them. His nose had been broken again. His lips were swollen out of shape.

  And there was blood on the front of his shirt.

  A hundred and fifty yards along the track, Alan and Jane Bignall were walking towards the car. Their Flat Coated Retriever, Bob, was busy up ahead, of them, tacking backwards and forwards across the track, in and out of bushes and hedgerows. Bob suddenly clocked the Triumph, did a double take, decided the car was worth a cursory inspection and loped up to it. Level with the driver’s door he raised himself up on his hind legs, put his front paws on the window ledge and peered in at Mac.

  In his seat, Mac exhaled. His throat burbled, blood seeped between his swollen lips and he died.

  Bob barked at him.

  Back along the track, the Bignalls caught up with what was happening.

  “Christ, look what he’s doing now,” Jane said.

  Alan set off up the track like a sprinter out of the blocks, bellowing at the dog.

  “Get down Bob... Get down!!”

  Bob eased himself backwards, dropped down onto all fours and did his best to look handsome, rather than guilty.

  “Get away from there,” Alan said and turned to speak to the man in the car. “I apologise. I’m so sorry.”

  Then he saw the blood staining the front of the man’s shirt and followed the line of his arm, away from his body toward the passenger side of the car, where his left hand lay on the leather seat, loosely holding on to a semi-automatic pistol.

  “Bloody hell,” he said.

  He covered his mouth with his right hand and stepped back from the car. Bob decided he had exhausted the possibilities the Triumph had to offer and charged off up the track. Jane arrived at the car. Her husband pointed towards the front seat. She moved to the door and looked in at Mac.

  “Oh my God. He’s dead.” She turned back to Alan. “He is, isn’t he?”

  Alan, still with his hand over his mouth and looking like he was about to throw up, nodded at her. Jane looked at him and sighed. He was never any good in situations like these. Emergencies she meant, not exactly what was happening right now. She had only seen one dead body before – her grandfather, laid out in his coffin in the parlour of his tiny terraced house. A man in a car with blood all over the place and a gun in his hand was a new experience, but she was the one to take charge here. There was a public phone box at the end of the lane.

  “Get Bob. Then come back here and wait by the car. I’ll go and call the police.”

  *

  Ed Grover pressed the bell push on the door frame at 5 Blenheim Villas and waited for Rachel to appear. She did not. He pressed the button a second time and got the same response. Still a no show. He pressed the bottom bell and this time he was rewarded by the appearance of Maddie Rawlins. She opened the door to him. He introduced himself.

  “You’re an American.”

  Once again Grover wished he had a dollar for every time somebody had said that to him during the last ten years.

  “At your service Ma’am.”

  “Polite too,” Mrs Rawlins said.

  “I’ve been here before,” Grover said. “I came to see Nick Hope. I found his body upstairs. A friend of his, Harry Morrison, has been arrested for the murder. I think you’ve seen him.” He pointed over Mrs Rawlins’ shoulder, at the coin box on the wall. “I need to check out your phone number.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “I am assisting the law team representing Harry. There was a number he called often and we want to know if it was that one there.”

  Mrs Rawlins recited the phone number to him. It was that one there.

  *

  At the Magistrates Court, Harry had to wait until 10 o’clock to be called, but he was dealt with swiftly. The charge was read out. He pleaded not guilty. When
asked where he was on the night in question, Harry looked at Zoe. She told the court she had talked with her client for the first time, less than two hours ago. In spite of not having had time to prepare a case, she had every reason to believe that her client would be able to account for his movements throughout the entire evening, in due course. The three Magistrates, two men and one woman, whispered to each other for a minute or so, checked something with the Clerk of the Court and announced that the matter would go before the Assize Court in nine days’ time.

  *

  The black Wolseley slowed as it approached the entrance to a track on the right, with a ‘Road Closed’ sign in the middle of it and a uniformed constable standing next to that. The constable waved the car to a stop. In the front passenger seat, DS Goole wound down the window. The constable looked into the car. Recognised Bridge on the back seat and addressed him.

  “Best to go up the track on foot, Inspector,” he said. “We have a patrol car up there already. More vehicles to come I imagine. There’s no space to turn round. The track ends at a gate on to farmland.”

  Goole and Bridge got out of the car and walked the couple of hundred yards. The track was earth, flattened hard by tractor wheels and other farm traffic. There was grass running up the middle. The patrol car, another black Wolseley, sat on the track in front of the Triumph. The windows were down. Bridge took time to look inside the car. There was a man and a woman in the back with a huge brown dog sitting on the seat between them. Bridge said ‘good morning’. The dog barked in response.

  A constable stepped up to the car.

  “That’s Bob, Sir. With Mr and Mrs Bignall.”

  “We’ll talk in a moment if that’s okay,” Bridge said to them. “We’ll try not to keep you long.”

  Bob barked again. Jane Bignall tugged at his collar.

  “That’s enough Bob.” She looked at Bridge and said, “Thank you.”

  He joined Goole at the Triumph and stared into the driving seat at Robbie McAllister.

  *

  In the kitchen in Gladstone Road, Zoe was making everything clear.

  “Now that Harry is on remand and out of the jurisdiction of the Magistrates, we can apply to a Judge for bail.”