One Fight at a Time

by Jeff Dowson

  “And so he told you?”

  “Hey I’m a revolutionary. Everybody knows that. An entertainer and an outsider. A stager of protests. Along the line, I’ve probably done a number of things to get thrown into jail for. I am the safest confidante in the west country.”

  “Are the boys together now?” Grover asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  Wharton shook his head. Grover pressed harder.

  “A second disappearing act is going to make him look guiltier than ever. He’s supposed to report to the Bedminster Police Station every forty-eight hours. Which makes his next visit, Monday morning. 9 o’clock”

  Suddenly, Wharton looked tired.

  “He knows that. And this is not a disappearing act. He and Mark just want a couple of days to themselves. Harry says he needs time to work out what to do.”

  “He doesn’t have that luxury. If he fails to report, he will become a fugitive again. And he needs to tell the truth.”

  “He did not kill Nick Hope,” Wharton said, emphasising every word.

  “So we have to show that. Without dispute. Not with a flaky story about a trip to the movies.”

  Wharton stared resolutely at the wall behind Grover.

  “Come on, Jerry,” Grover persisted. “Help me get him off the hook.”

  “I need a drink,” Wharton said.

  He got to his feet. Matched by Grover, who got between him and the doorway.

  “No, Jerry. You need to tell me where he is.”

  Wharton could not look at the determination in Grover’s eyes. He sat down again.

  “I will tell you where he was on the night of the killing. He was with Mark. At his flat.”

  “Doing what?”

  Wharton looked at him in disbelief. “Oh come on Ed... He was with Mark until 9 o’clock, or thereabouts. He left, to go to Nick’s. He wanted to pick up a note book.”

  Grover nodded. “Yes I know.”

  “He walked, so he must have got there around 20 minutes after 9. He found Nick’s body.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “He called me. In a panic. I picked him up outside Blenheim Villas. He told me he had called Eric. I drove him to Brean Sands.”

  Grover sighed. “So that’s what he needs to tell the court.”

  “No.” Wharton stood up again. Stepped close to Grover. “What he needs, is someone to find Nick Hope’s killer, before he has to go into court.”

  Grover rose to face him. Wharton continued.

  “Harry will stick to his Blue Lamp alibi.”

  “Even though he could be convicted of murder?”

  “The truth isn’t much of an alternative. The choice is, lie to the court, or stand up and let the jury find out he’s a Nancy Boy. Queer. A poof.”

  “And you and Mark by implication.”

  There was a long silence. Wharton looked at Grover, dead centre.

  “I don’t care about myself,” he said, without a trace of sentimentality. “Believe me. In all probability, I won’t see the summer out. I have pancreatic cancer. At best, I have three or four months.”

  Grover said nothing.

  “Those two boys have done no wrong. Except fall in love. For which, if the cards land face up, they will go to prison. And Harry’s already sampled that remember?”

  “Then why the hell did you take pictures?”

  “Yes, that was stupid. All three of us were pissed one night, sometime over the Easter holiday. Mark developed the pictures in his bathroom under the stairs.”

  “Tell me about Mark,” Grover said.

  “In any normal course of events, the two boys would never meet. Oceans of space between them on the social scale. Harry is from south Bristol, his father is a metal worker, his mother a shopkeeper. Mark’s father is a career copper, who married into money. The family house, up in Leigh Woods, was a gift from his father in law. Mark is an only child – the one thing he and Harry have in common. Indulged all through his young life by his mother. His father was never in the house. Too busy chasing felons, brown-nosing the people his in-laws introduced him to and rising through the ranks. He’s singled minded and diamond hard. He sent his son to Clifton College. Mark hated it. He found some solace in a group of four or five kids who discovered they were ‘different’. He did his national service at Catterick in Yorkshire then in the Rhine Army, in Koblenz – against all odds, the first experience he had truly enjoyed in his life. Away from home. He came back to find his father had got him a job with Faber and Wallace, financial brokers in Queens Square. He turned up and worked hard, but he hated that too. He finally got himself a job. By himself. Without his father pulling strings.

  Grover interrupted him. “Yes, I know about that.”

  Walton wound up. “Mark feels better about stuff now, but his father came close to making his life a misery.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  “A chance encounter. In a cafe, on Whiteladies Road. He was the only person at a table for four and the rest of the place was full. We said ‘hello’, we talked and... things went on from there.”

  “How did Mark and Harry meet?”

  “I introduced them. I’ve known the Morrisons for a long time. Harry loved being here when he was a kid. Used to help out. I’d like to think he might take this over. I’ve nobody else to leave it to.”

  “Does he know you have cancer?”

  “Yes.” He looked at Grover steadfastly. “You have to find out who killed Nicholas Hope, before the case gets into court. It’s the only way out of this situation. No murder charge means no court appearance and the rest goes untold.”

  “Was Hope homosexual?”

  Wharton shook his head. “No, he wasn’t.”

  Grover got to his feet and stepped out into the sunshine. The donkeys had moved further along the beach. Wharton joined him.

  “Harry and Mark are in a bungalow on Sand Bay, a couple of miles north along the coast road. It belongs to a friend of mine. He’s away for a while. I’ll give you the directions.”

  Sand Bay was a half-moon curve of sand, shingle and salt marsh. A curious eco system; the elements tied together by swathes of spartina grass planted before the war to stop erosion, by giving the sand something to cling on to. A narrow road ran around the bay, bordered on the landward side by bungalows built by their owners, all of them different shapes and sizes.

  Blue Seas sat half way around the bay. On short, fat concrete pillars, in a sandy space surrounded by a chain link fence. A narrow wooden terrace looked out across the road to the beach. Harry and Mark sat in deck chairs, a low table between them with a radio sitting on it; the mains lead snaking out to it from an open window. Anne Shelton was singing Be Mine.

  Grover opened the gate. It creaked. Mark Chaplin looked up from the book he was reading. Deck chairs aren’t easy to get out of, but Chaplin left his like it had just burst into flames. Harry was wearing sunglasses and appeared to be asleep. Chaplin called to him as Grover walked towards the terrace. He woke up, lifted the shades above his eyebrows, focused on Grover and froze.

  “Fucking hell,” he muttered.

  Grover stopped and held up his arms.

  “I just want to talk,” he said. “Mark, turn the radio off, then come back and sit down.”

  Mark did as he was told and returned with an old bentwood chair. He planted it on the terrace and fell back into his deck chair. Grover sat down and stared at both of them.

  “You guys will never make it on the run. You’re too easy to trace.”

  *

  Arthur Morrison clocked off at 1.15 on Saturdays. He was home twenty minutes later. He let himself in though the wash house door and walked into the kitchen. Ellie was just replacing the phone receiver.

  “Ed’s found Harry,” she said, grabbed Arthur and hugged him. “He’s with Mark Chaplin.”

  “At his flat?”

  Ellie shuffled and switched her weight from one hip to the other.

  “No... They
’re at Sand Bay. For the weekend. In a friend’s bungalow.”

  “Who do they know at Sand Bay?”

  Ellie didn’t want to bother with add-ons.

  “What does it matter?” she said, frustrated at Arthur not matching her mood.

  “Harry has to report to the police station at 9 o’clock on Monday. Has he forgotten that?”

  “No. Ed says he will be back tomorrow night.”

  Arthur moved across the kitchen.

  “I’m going to change,” he said.

  “I’ll make some lunch,” Ellie said.

  “What the hell is he doing at Sand Bay with Mark Chaplin?” Arthur muttered as he went into the hall.

  *

  Grover left the phone box at the north end of Beach Road. He climbed up the hillside behind it and followed the track out to Sand Point, trying to convince himself that everything was straight forward now. Harry had a genuine alibi, if he chose to use it.

  In terms of knowledge, insight and reasoning, Grover had moved on.

  Geographically, however, he appeared to back where he was four days ago. Directly in front of him was Wales. Again. He sat down on the grass and picked out the same landmarks. Suddenly all that insight and reasoning ebbed away and he became depressed. Had he known that Wales generated the same feeling in most people in this part of the county, he might have remained optimistic.

  On cue, a monstrous grey cloud slid across the sun and suddenly the environs looked as dispirited as Grover felt. He got up, retraced his steps and walked along Beach Road, back to Salome.

  He checked his watch as he drove through Ashton. He pulled up at a public phone box, fished four pennies from a trouser pocket and called Mel at home. She asked him how his trip to Weston had worked out.

  “Harry’s alibi will save him. If he agrees to use it. He’s still insisting that he won’t.”

  Mel moved on.

  “Leroy Winston was beaten up,” she said. “In the early hours, outside El Paradis.”

  Grover processed this. Mel continued.

  “Along with the saxophone player, Fidel, who is still in intensive care. Rachel called a few minutes ago. Leroy has been allowed to go home. She wants you to meet them both at Blenheim Villas. As soon as you can.”

  “Okay.”

  “One more thing... Zoe wants a meeting at 9 o’clock on Monday morning. For a strategy update, followed by a planning conference. So...”

  She hesitated. Grover read the mood.

  “Go on,” he said

  “So do you have a strategy? And have you any plans you can share?”

  “The strategy so far hasn’t yielded anything we can use,” Grover said.

  “Right...”

  “But I do have a proposition or two.”

  “In other words you have neither strategy, nor plans.”

  Grover was silent.

  “Still, Monday is another day,” Mel said.

  “Thank you Scarlett.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Grover rang Rachel’s doorbell at 3.45.

  “We’ve found something,” Rachel said, as she led the way upstairs. “In the top flat.”

  The place had been cleared of furniture, save for the bedside cabinets, the low table and the dining table and chairs. The paintwork looked better washed and cleaned, the floor was a huge improvement without the carpet and the kitchen sparkled – as well as it was able to, after hours of labour with Ajax. Winston was sitting, straight backed, at the table, examining the contents of a large white envelope. There was a big, multi-coloured bruise on his left cheek and below that a square of lint and cotton wool covering a stitched up wound, held in place by strips of Elastoplast. He looked better than Grover had expected.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  Slowly and carefully, Winston shuffled into a different position on the chair.

  “In no state to do the lindy hop, but there’s nothing broken.”

  “What about the Langley fight? Is that off now?”

  Winston looked glum. “I’m in no shape to train, so...”

  Grover sat down opposite him. Winston slid some sheets of paper across the table top.

  “Nick Hope’s bank statements,” he said. “Rachel found them in this envelope. It was taped to the underside of the shelf under the kitchen sink. The crime scene team missed it.”

  Grover looked across the room at the kitchen. Nobody examines the underside of a sink unit shelf, unless they expect to find something attached to it. The most you do is dig into the box of cloths and dusters, search through the packets of soap powder and bottles of cleaning fluid and check the contents to make sure they are as described on the label. Only the most zealous spring cleaner goes to work on the underside of the kitchen sink shelf.

  Winston’s voice brought Grover’s attention back to the table.

  “He wasn’t short of money.”

  Grover looked down at the statements, covering the thirteen months since March 1949. There were a series of regular cash deposits paid into Hope’s bank account during the first and third weeks of each month. Always the same figures, the first payment £100, the second £150.

  Winston reached across the table with his right arm and separated the sheets with his fingers, finding the last statement.

  “Look at the balance. Over two thousand pounds.” He surveyed the room. “So why the hell did he live here?”

  A question Grover asked himself in that same moment.

  “Think about it,” he said. “Supposing a person you had known for a while, apparently scraping a living like everyone else around him, suddenly bought a new roadster and moved into a piece of upmarket real estate. What would be your first question?”

  Rachel chipped in. “Where did he get the money from?”

  Grover pointed at the statements. “Which leads us, in this case, to what presumption?”

  “The gains are ill-gotten,” she said.

  “By what means?”

  Winston looked at Rachel. She shrugged back. Grover elaborated a little.

  “How do you earn a quick buck with the odds on your side and the minimum of effort?”

  “Blackmail,” Winston suggested.

  “If I was putting my shirt on it...” Grover said.

  Rachel spoke again. “You know what? I’m hungry. I’ve just realised we haven’t eaten since the hospital breakfast. What about you Ed?”

  Grover’s reply was pre-empted by the sound of the phone ringing down in the hall.

  “I’d better get that,” Rachel said. “My day to answer.”

  She left the flat swiftly and clattered her way down the stairs. Grover looked at Winston, who shifted his weight carefully and leant back in his chair. “The tenants work a phone rota...”

  “How well did you know Nick?” Grover asked.

  “As well as any acquaintance. I saw him at the gym, maybe two or three times a week. He always seemed to be on business. I nodded at him and left him alone mostly.”

  “What about Harry?”

  “He turned up a time or two. I talked with him. He was interested in what went on in the gym. We went to a fight once. The welterweight bout between Dave Langley and Jimmy Wilson. Roly got us front row seats. Come to think of it, I guess I got to know Harry better than Nick.”

  “Were you ever up here while Nick was in residence?”

  The two men heard Rachel’s footsteps on the stairs again.

  “No. Can’t say that I –”

  Rachel came into the room. Winston saw her and froze into silence. She moved towards him, unsteady, as if trying to focus.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “That was Xavier,” she explained. “Fidel died fifteen minutes ago. Some internal bleed in his brain the doctors couldn’t fix.”

  Winston got to his feet, wincing at the effort, and wrapped Rachel in his arms. She began to cry. Grover stared down at the table top. It was a while before Rachel’s sobs died away. Winston was the first to speak.

  “I’ll br
eak the bastard in two,” he said.

  Rachel pulled back to arms’ length. “No,” she said. “Go to the police.”

  “Maybe. Afterwards.”

  Rachel appealed to Grover. “Tell him, for God’s sake.”

  “This is no longer just plain assault,” Grover said. “It’s... what do you call it over here?”

  “Manslaughter,” Rachel said.

  “Right. So stay here and wait for the cops to call,” Grover said. “Console yourself with the notion that whatever you dream up to inflict on Bert Harker, won’t even come close to the punishment Daniel Zampa can dish out.”

  Winston considered that and silently agreed. Rachel thought about it and looked alarmed. Grover pictured the possible extent of Zampa’s retribution and quickly blotted it from his mind. Harker was unlikely to turn up for work on Monday. Or maybe, not ever again. And Zampa would simply regard the treatment meted out as natural justice.

  The doorbell speaker buzzed. The two men looked at Rachel. She stared inquisitively back.

  Grover shrugged. “I don’t live here.”

  “I can’t run up and down stairs,” Winston said.

  Rachel left the room again.

  Out of the pause that followed, Grover asked for Winston’s help.

  “Will you do something for me?”

  “Sure.”

  “Put the bank statements back under the sink. If the cops do call, don’t talk about finding them. I’d like this to stay between us for a day or two. I’ll share it with Harry’s law team, but no one else. If the paperwork turns out to be important, you can find it again and hand it over.”

  “Okay.”

  Winston put the statements back into the envelope.

  There were footsteps on the stairs again. This time, more than just one pair. Rachel ushered Daniel Zampa into the flat. He spoke before the two men got over their surprise.

  “So this is one of Roly’s restoration projects,” he said. “Sam Nicholson gave him folding stuff, for this?”

  “It’s got a bathroom,” Winston said.

  “Well, it’s one step up from a sink on the landing. But you can do better than this, surely?”