“So your first guess.”
“You were born on the seventh of the month,” I said.
“Not quite right.”
“In July, the seventh month.”
“Getting warmer.”
“In a year with a seven in it.”
Darke said: “All wrong. I’m beginning to enjoy this.”
He drank more champagne.
Darke had tricked me. It had nothing to do with dates at all. I’d wasted three of my seven guesses. I thought again.
“You were born under Libra, the seventh sign of the Zodiac.”
“No.”
“It was you father’s lucky number.”
“No.”
“Your father was a seventh son. So you’re the seventh son of a seventh son.”
Darke said: “My old man would have enjoyed that one. Not sure about my old lady, though.”
I had one guess left. One chance to avoid a trip through the back door with Fat Arthur.
I thought about what Darke had just said.
“My old man would have enjoyed that one. Not sure about my old lady.”
There was something about the name which made it congenial to his father but not his mother. I forced ideas round my brain. I thought I knew the reason why Darke’s father had liked the name. It was like a trophy name. It marked the fact that he had done something seven times. Something that involved the baby Septimus. A name which Darke’s father was proud of. But it was a trophy name which the mother hated. Every time she called Darke by his given name she’d remember something she’d prefer to forget. But which Darke’s father wanted her to remember – perhaps to control her, to keep her in her place. Septimus. What seven would a father like Darke’s want to remember but the mother want to forget?
My brain felt like a furnace running out of fuel.
“Come on,” Darke said. “You’re keeping Fat Arthur waiting.”
Darke laughed. Fat Arthur laughed. The brunette laughed. The band laughed. Everyone in the room laughed. Even Myrtle, my newfound ally, laughed. I didn’t laugh.
I said: “Because you were your father’s seventh son by seven different women.”
Darke stopped laughing.
“Shall I take him out the back now?” Fat Arthur said.
“He’s right.” Darke’s voice sounded like an iceberg cracking.
The laughter died away. Myrtle chewed a fingernail. The brunette crumpled liked a deflated balloon. The band looked as though they didn’t know whether to strike up “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” or play Mendelssohn’s Funeral March.
I got up and sauntered over to the bar. Took a few peanuts from the bowl. Walked towards the door. Turned to face Darke.
“It’s been an interesting evening, Septimus,” I said. “I’ll have some more questions for you soon.”
I tossed a peanut in the air, caught it in my mouth and went through the door.
The air seemed very cold when I stepped into the street.
I had to get back to my car in the mews, so I walked down the street to the turning that would take me round to the back of the block. When I reached the corner, I looked back. A cab had drawn up outside the Golden Kiss. A man dressed in a dinner jacket got out and slipped quickly into the club. He was carrying an expensive-looking leather briefcase.
He didn’t look as though he was on his way for a big night out. Not with a briefcase. He had business with Darke. It would be dirty business. But I couldn’t go back to ask him what it was.
Instead, I walked round to collect my MGB from the mews. In the morning, I would have to discover who Darke’s mystery visitor was. And I’d already had an idea about how to do it.
Chapter 6
The following morning, I walked into the newsroom at five past eight. I had a busy day ahead of me.
The newsroom was gearing up for the midday edition. There was already a deadline buzz in the air – the kind of creative tension which gets newspapers out on time. Reporters hollered down telephones at contacts they should have called earlier or cursed as the keys on their antique typewriters jammed. The cigarette fug under the fluorescent lights was thicker. I nodded to a few colleagues, checked the messages on my desk, then headed for the telephone booths at the side of the newsroom.
The idea of the booths was to provide some privacy for calls to special contacts. In practice, they were usually used by reporters for placing bets with bookies or arranging dates they didn’t want their colleagues to know about.
I normally called my contacts from the telephone on my desk. But I had a special reason for keeping the call I was about to make confidential. Every newsroom has a snitch – someone not averse to picking up some pocket money by passing details of exclusives to rival papers. I didn’t want colleagues earwigging this call. No rivals were going to chase after this story if I could help it.
I opened the door of the quietest booth, kicked some scrunched-up copy paper from the floor into the newsroom, brushed some dog-ends off the phone shelf and picked up a phone handset that smelt of stale sweat.
The number I dialled was Devil’s Dyke Taxis, Brighton’s largest cab firm. The cab delivering the briefcase-carrying figure to the Golden Kiss the previous evening had been a Devil’s Dyke car.
The phone rang eight times before it was answered and a cigarette-stained voice croaked: “Scroggins. What do you want at this time of the morning?”
“And a very good morning to you, too, Harry,” I said. “Colin Crampton.”
“Oh, you. You’re not calling me for a cab, surely? Ring the despatcher.”
“I don’t want a cab, Harry. I want information. One of your cabs dropped off a punter at the Golden Kiss around ninety-thirty yesterday evening. I’d like you to find out where the pick-up came from.”
“We drop off scores of punters at that rip-off joint.”
“I only want to know about one,” I said.
“We can’t remember individual punters.”
“Your driver wouldn’t forget this one. Middle-aged bloke. Late thirties. Dressed in a DJ. Carrying a briefcase.”
“Most of the punters we drop there wear DJs.”
“But they don’t carry briefcases. So it shouldn’t be difficult to put out a general call to your drivers asking them which one handled the fare?”
“If he was driving last night, chances are he’s tucked up in noddy land having a kip.”
“Then put out the call again later.”
I was puzzled. Harry had helped me before on stories. Now he was playing hard to get.
“This shouldn’t be difficult, Harry,” I said.
“I don’t know.” He coughed. He fell silent. I waited. He was probably lighting another fag.
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
“Customer confidentiality,” he said.
“What? It’s never bothered you before.”
“This time is different.”
I knew why. Had I been asking about a cab drop at the Metropole or the Grand Hotel, Harry would have had the information for me by now. He was worried because it was the Golden Kiss. Owned by Septimus Darke.
“I give you my personal guarantee that there’ll be no comeback on this,” I said.
“That won’t mean much if I suddenly find you-know-who on my arse.”
“You won’t. Nobody else will know.”
“Sorry. I can’t do it. Now, can I finish my breakfast? I’ve still got half a packet of Weights to smoke.” He gave a throaty cough.
“That’s a pity, Harry.”
“Sure. Perhaps another time.”
“There may not be another time after I’ve run the other story,” I said.
“Other story? What other story? You’re talking in riddles.”
“Well, if you’re going to close off one story I’ll have to write another. We’ve got to fill up those empty columns with something. Perhaps it’s just as well. I’ve been meaning to run that story about the cab firm which has a contract to deliver Madame Blenkinsop�
��s girls to punters at certain seafront hotels.”
There was a wheezing sound at the other end of the phone.
“Special rate, I understand, at twice the money on the clock,” I said. “Sounds like profitable business.”
More wheezing plus a kind of strangled cough.
“I’d even heard that the cab firm’s owner occasionally got a freebie – courtesy of Madame – for transport services rendered,” I said.
The guttural sounds of Harry having a hawk and a spit came down the line. It sounded like a rat swimming through treacle. I held the phone away from me. Then I heard a more chastened voice. I put the receiver to my ear.
“You wouldn’t run that story…would you?” he said.
“Personally, I’d rather it remained a little secret between old friends,” I said.
“And are we old friends?”
“I’d like to think so,” I said. “And I’d hope we remain that way.”
“I suppose I hope so, too.” He didn’t sound enthusiastic.
“So I can rely on you to put out the call?”
“I’ll put out the call. Can’t promise that it’ll produce what you want.”
“I know you’ll do your best.”
I put down the phone and left the booth. As I got back to my desk, Frank Figgis walked into the newsroom. He came over towards me and said: “I want to have a word with you.”
“It’s mutual,” I said. “But I’ve got the police briefing in ten minutes. Can we speak when I get back from the cop shop?”
“I’ll be in my office.”
Figgis wandered off to hassle someone else.
I picked up my notebook and went out.
The briefing took place at Brighton Police Station in Eastern Avenue every morning except Sunday, at nine o’clock.
The occasion was intended as an opportunity for the cops to tell journalists about anything interesting they’d been dealing with in the past twenty-four hours. It was supposed to be a shining example of the officers of the law aiding the gentlemen of the press. It rarely turned out like that. The gentlemen of the press normally meant me from the Chronicle and Jim Houghton, my opposite number on the Evening Argus, the town’s other daily paper.
The briefing took place in a room furnished with cheap plastic tables and hard chairs. The cells downstairs were probably better equipped. I suppose it reflected the relative respect Brighton’s top coppers had for the criminal classes and the press.
Jim was already in the briefing room when I arrived. He was nursing a plastic cup of weak tea. I generally avoided the cop-shop cuppa. Like most of Brighton’s police, it smelt a bit off.
I walked in and said: “What’s news, Jim?”
He said: “If you read the Argus today you’ll find out.”
Jim was a veteran newsman. He was pushing sixty and looked it. He had a lined face and thinning dark hair which covered a large head. He walked with a slight limp. He looked a bit past it. Except when you tried to beat him to a story. Then you realised there was still power in those old legs and a bushel of brainpower in that oversized head. He’d scooped me on several stories since I’d become the Chronicle’s crime correspondent – and I respected him for that. But I was damned if he was going to scoop me on the Trumper disappearance.
I grinned: “Read it in the Argus. I guess I opened myself for that one.”
Jim smiled. He was wearing the same threadbare brown suit that he sported every day.
“Know who’s giving the briefing this morning?” I asked.
“Sergeant Fairbrother, I think.”
“So probably nothing worth writing about.”
“Guess so.”
Fairbrother handled the meeting when there was no serious crime to talk about. If anything big happened a more senior officer stepped in.
I was about to ask Jim whether he was working on anything interesting, on the long-shot chance that he might let something slip, when Fairbrother walked in.
He was a big man who’d run to fat since he’d been taken off the beat to handle admin at the main police station. He was carrying a small sheaf of papers. He sat down opposite us.
“What’s doing?” Jim asked.
Fairbrother shuffled through his papers.
“Yesterday was a quiet day,” he said.
“So bad news,” I said.
“Not for us,” Fairbrother said.
He extracted a sheet of paper and started to read. “A bicycle stolen from a house in Maldon Road, a minor motor accident at Five Ways – nobody hurt – and a dog lost in Stanmer Park.”
“What breed?” Jim asked.
“King Charles spaniel.”
“Any pictures?” I said.
“No.”
We put down our pencils. Animal stories without a picture are a non-starter.
Fairbrother frowned. “There’s nothing else, so if you’ve got no further questions.” He stood up and left the room.
“I don’t know why we bother about these meetings,” I said to Jim.
“I do,” he said. “It’s the only way I can keep an eye on what you’re doing. Same for you in my respect, I guess.”
“You’ve discovered my little secret,” I said.
“Not yet,” Jim said. “But I have a feeling you’re working on a big story you’re not telling me about.”
“What makes you think that?” I asked.
“Instinct,” he said.
He tapped the side of his nose and left.
I worried about what Jim had said on my way back to the office.
I had two concerns. The first was whether Jim had got a whiff of the Trumper story through his own contacts. He’d been covering crime much longer than I had and his contacts went right up to the most senior levels in Brighton’s police. My only reliable contact was Ted Wilson. The second was whether I should mention what Jim had said to Frank when I got back to the office. If Figgis thought the Argus could scoop us, he might force me to run the story before I’d covered all the angles.
I still didn’t have answers to either question when I walked into Figgis’s office fifteen minutes later. He was sitting behind his desk and lighting a cigarette. He’d hung his jacket over the back of his chair. He’d loosened his tie and undone the top button of his shirt. Rolled up his sleeves. He was settling in for a hard session.
“Anything from the rozzers this morning?” he asked.
“Bicycle theft in Maldon Road. Might make a nib,” I said.
“So the front-page splash I asked you for becomes a news in brief.” He waved me to a chair. “Circulation has dropped this month,” he said.
“Always happens in August.”
“More than usual this year. His Holiness is getting twitchy.”
Gerald Pope – His Holiness behind his back – was the Evening Chronicle’s editor. He exuded an Olympian detachment from the grubby business of news gathering. He had a plummy voice – “off” came out as “orf” – which must have impressed the paper’s proprietor but didn’t do a lot for the rest of the staff. He came into the newsroom on rare occasions, usually by mistake.
I said: “As you know better than anyone, it’s hard news that sells newspapers.”
“Yes,” Figgis said. “But it’s the big running stories that get people buying papers every day.”
“I might have something,” I said. “I’ve got a feeling that it could be big but at the moment it doesn’t amount to much.”
I recounted what Wilson had told me in Prinny’s Pleasure and summarised my visits to the Krazy Kat, Woodingdean and the Golden Kiss.
Figgis smiled when I told him about Darke. “Sort of scam I might have got up to twenty years ago. But you’ll need to watch your back with Darke.”
“I intend to.”
“I agree you’ve not got enough at the moment,” Figgis said. “But I think it’s worth taking it further. What’s your next move?”
I told him about my call to Scroggins.
“Seems a long shot,” Figgis
said. “But see what you can do?”
I got up and moved towards the door, then turned back. Figgis was stubbing out his ciggie on the edge of his desk.
“There’s something else I ought to tell you,” I said. “At the police briefing this morning, Jim Houghton mentioned he thought I was working on a big story. I’m wondering whether he’s got wind of it.”
Figgis opened his cigarette packet slowly. He took out a fag and rolled it between his fingers.
“Jim’s a crafty operator. I think he was probably on a fishing expedition. Sort of trick he’d try to pull. Even so, let’s be careful. Don’t make any calls about the story from your desk if you can help it. And keep me informed.”
Figgis had lit the fag and was staring out of the window in thought as I left.
Twenty minutes later, I was sitting at my desk batting out two pars about the stolen bicycle on my Remington when the phone rang.
I lifted the receiver and a tar-encrusted voice said: “It’s your lucky day, sunshine.”
“And yours, too, Harry,” I said.
“Let’s not go into that. That drop-off at the Golden Kiss. I’ve spoken to the driver. He picked up the punter from an address in Westdean.”
He gave me the street and house number.
“No need for me to tell you who lives there. I expect you’ll find out anyway. Tat-ta.” The line went dead.
I got up and went over to the bookcase on the other side of the room. I pulled down a bulky file containing the electoral register for Westdean. I turned to the street and ran my finger down the page until I reached the house number Harry had given me.
“Well, well,” I murmured to myself.
The visitor to the Golden Kiss had been Derek Cross. He featured regularly in the Chronicle’s columns. He was a leading member of Brighton Council and tipped as next year’s mayor.
So what business did this prominent citizen have late at night with Septimus Darke?
Ten minutes later I was in the Evening Chronicle’s morgue with a large bag of jam doughnuts.
I needed Henrietta Houndstooth’s help – and the doughnuts would be the perfect bribe. Henrietta ran the Chronicle’s morgue as punctiliously as a Victorian undertaker. But she watched over no dead bodies. Instead, she kept one and a half million press clippings from back issues of the Chronicle meticulously filed away for future reference. The morgue was where old copies of the paper went to rest in peace.
Headline Murder Page 5
