The Proprietor's Daughter

by Lewis Orde

  “Enough! You’ve made your point!”

  The sharpness in Katherine’s voice did not deter Barnhill. He carried right on. “Those are just some of the well-documented episodes. The smaller incidents, like the Manchester United supporters who beat up and robbed the blind program seller at Tottenham a few years back . . . well, those things are hardly worth bothering about, are they?”

  “But we don’t have people shooting each other on the street, do we?”

  Barnhill laughed so hard that the clerk of the court, who had just taken his seat in front of the magistrates’ bench, looked over crossly. “With sports fans like that, you don’t need people shooting each other on the street.”

  Annoyed at the American wire-service journalist, and just as angry at herself for being drawn into the argument, Katherine turned away from Barnhill. The court was assembling. The three magistrates took their seats on the bench, looking down at the dock. Better skim through the court list, Katherine decided, and see if there’s anything exciting. Names and addresses flew before her eyes, followed by varied charges, the lesser of which to be dealt with today by the magistrates, with the more serious being passed up to a higher court. Breach of the peace. Assault and battery. Grievous bodily harm. Assault with intent to resist arrest. The police were really going to town with these prosecutions, she thought. And so they should!

  Katherine’s eyes flicked on over additional pages, more charges. And then she stopped. One name and address jumped right off the page into her face. Brian Waters, an eighteen-year-old messenger of Cadmus Court, Islington, was charged with assault and battery.

  Katherine’s gaze flew from the court list to the public gallery. The white-haired man she’d spotted earlier, before the two policemen had blocked him from view — no wonder he’d looked so blasted familiar! It was Archie Waters, the elevator operator from the Eagle building. He had not been at work that morning, and Katherine had simply assumed he had the day off. Those two policemen had moved, and she could see Archie sitting there. His raincoat was unbuttoned. Katherine spotted a flash of color, one of the combat ribbons of which he was so rightly proud. But there was nothing proud about Archie’s appearance today. His back was bent, his face gaunt, eyes hollow. He looked like an old soldier, all right, but an old soldier who had fought all of his wars this past weekend.

  The court proceedings began, a massive conveyor belt of justice dispensed. There could be found among the defendants little of the fierce aggression they’d displayed two days earlier. Now, meekness was a weapon with which to beguile the magistrates; loud obscenity was replaced with overdone politeness and the contrived ending to every reply of “Sir.” But the magistrates, guided by the clerk of the court, were not so gullible. The sentencing was harsh, consisting of large fines and short terms of imprisonment.

  Two hours into the proceedings, Brian Waters was summoned. Wearing corduroy trousers and a brown jacket, he entered the dock. A large patch of adhesive tape covered his left cheek, and a bruise circled his eye. When he pleaded guilty to assault and battery, the American wire-service reporter on Katherine’s left permitted himself a dry chuckle.

  “If this is the guy being charged, can you imagine what the other fellow must look like?”

  Katherine turned angrily on him. “Shut up!”

  The rebuke was far louder than she had intended. In front of the bench, the clerk of the court looked at the press box over lowered glasses. “Thank you, madam, for trying to establish some decorum. Now if you would kindly heed your own good advice, we will continue.”

  Blushing, Katherine switched her attention back to the dock. Brian Waters was staring at her. With recognition came horror, a realization for the first time that his own name, his own misdeeds, would be made public. The charge against Brian stemmed from a fight that had taken place outside the stadium following the game. Brian pleaded guilty, but claimed in mitigation that he had been attacked first, by rival fans.

  “Any assault and battery on my part,” he tried to explain to the bench, “was done strictly in self-defense.”

  The chief magistrate was singularly unimpressed. “Assault and battery, young man, is still assault and battery. I intend for you to remember that in the future.” The sentence he passed was a fine of two hundred and fifty pounds, or thirty days.

  Brian’s mouth dropped at the size of the fine. “I can’t pay all that in one go! I’ll need time. A lot of time!”

  It was a perfect moment, the chief magistrate decided, to demonstrate to the larger-than-normal audience that he possessed Solomon’s wisdom. “And you shall have it, young man. The same amount of time which your infernal football game takes. Ninety minutes. If the fine is not paid within ninety minutes, you will serve another kind of time.”

  Katherine glanced toward the rear of the court. Archie Waters was looking down, probably, she decided, at whatever money he had taken from his pockets. How much could he have, he and his grandson together? Twenty pounds? She opened her leather attaché case. Inside was a purse. She counted the money there. Forty-two pounds. And no checkbook, damn it!

  “The magistrate wasn’t so amusing that you have to throw money,” Raymond Barnhill said.

  “I wasn’t about to. I was trying to find the money to pay Brian’s fine.”

  “Brian, is it? You know that little creep?”

  “He works for me. For my father . . . he works for a company my father owns, that is.”

  “Make up your mind.”

  “My father owns Eagle Newspapers, and Eagle Newspapers owns Mercury Messengers. Brian works for Mercury. And he’s not what you call a creep, all right?” She turned back to the dock. Brian had been led away; another defendant was firmly in the chief magistrate’s sights.

  “Your father . . .?”

  “Oh, shut up!” Katherine told Barnhill for the second time. Then, in a much softer voice, she asked, “How much money do you have on you?”

  “Quite a bit. I just cashed my check.” He pulled a large roll of bills from his trouser pocket. “See? I’m just like all Americans: overpaid, oversexed —”

  “And over here. At least, your money can do some good.” Before Barnhill could move, Katherine jumped to her feet, snatched the money from his hand, and darted past him.

  Barnhill almost shouted, “Stop thief! Police!” Just in time he remembered that he was in a court of law. The place was full of uniforms. And what would he do once Katherine was apprehended? Press charges against her because she’d stolen the money to pay the fine of some delinquent for whom she had a soft spot? He left the press box and walked after her. She wasn’t hard to catch, because she’d stopped to talk to an elderly man in a raincoat that covered some kind of uniform.

  “I would have thought that with a rich daddy, you wouldn’t have needed to steal from other people,” Barnhill said. When Katherine refused to acknowledge him, and continued her conversation with Archie Waters, Barnhill lost his temper. He grabbed her shoulders and spun her around. “Did you hear what I just said?”

  Archie bristled. “You just watch how you speak to Miss Eagles. And take your dirty great hand off her shoulder.”

  Katherine stepped in between the two men. “Will you stop it, the pair of you? This is Archie Waters; he’s the grandfather of Brian Waters —”

  “Don’t have to look far to find out where the little thug gets his aggressive nature, do we?” Barnhill gibed.

  Archie tried to reach Barnhill, but Katherine stood firm. “Archie, although this American gentleman doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut, you have to believe he has a good heart. He’s the one” — she held up the roll of currency — “who just lent us the money to pay Brian’s fine.”

  “Lent you?” Barnhill laughed. “That gives it a whole new perspective. All this time, I thought you’d stolen it from me.”

  “Thank you,” Archie said. “I promise you’ll get it back.”

  “Very soon, I hope. I’ve got rent to pay.”

  Archie had twenty-eight po
unds in his pocket. Added to Katherine’s forty-two, it made seventy. She counted off one hundred and eighty pounds from Barnhill’s roll and returned the remainder to him.

  Archie paid the fine at the court office. Papers were signed, and Brian was released. Unlike the first time he had met Katherine, the youth needed no prompting from his grandfather. “Thanks a lot for helping me out. You as well,” he added to Barnhill, as they walked out of the court. “That old scrubber of a magistrate, he had it in for me good and proper.”

  “Do you think you might have deserved it?” Katherine asked. “What happened on Saturday was disgraceful.”

  “What am I supposed to do when me and my friends get jumped by some mob from Liverpool? Stand there and let them give us a good kicking?”

  They reached the street. Katherine waved down a passing taxi. As Archie held open the door for her, she said to Barnhill, “This is where we part company, Raymond. If you come by the Eagle building later this evening, I’ll have your money.”

  “I’ll be there at five-thirty.” He stood at the curb, watching the taxi move away before hailing one for himself.

  Once the taxi containing Katherine, Archie Waters, and his grandson reached Fleet Street, the three passengers went separate ways. Archie resumed his position on the elevator, Brian went to the Mercury Messengers office, which was housed in a garage a hundred yards from the Eagle building, and Katherine visited the accounts department, where she took an advance against her monthly salary to cover the money she had borrowed from Raymond Barnhill.

  When she returned to the news department, Lawrie Stimkin was waiting for her. “Got lots and lots of names, have we?”

  “And sentences to go with them.”

  “Good. Let’s pillory these antisocial monsters.”

  Katherine typed a lead paragraph, followed by names and charges she’d taken from the court list, and the corresponding sentences. She handed in the finished copy, stayed around long enough to see if the subeditors wanted anything clarified, then telephoned through to Gerald Waller’s office.

  “Tell him,” she said, when the editor’s secretary claimed her boss was busy, “that I need to speak to him very urgently.”

  Waller came on the line. “What is it, Katherine?”

  “I know how to get into the minds of these football maniacs. One of them works for Mercury. Brian Waters, Archie’s grandson. He got fined two hundred and fifty pounds today.”

  “What makes you think he’ll cooperate?”

  “Because I paid most of the fine for him.”

  “I can give you ten minutes.”

  “That’ll be fine.” She made calls to the lobby and to Mercury Messengers. Five minutes later, Archie brought his grandson up to the editorial floor. Katherine was waiting by the elevator. “I don’t care whether you got those cuts and bruises by defending yourself or not,” she told Brian. “We’re going in to see the editor, where you will sell yourself as the biggest hooligan and most violent football fan who ever lived.”

  Brian looked at her as though she were mad. “What on earth for? I’ll lose my job.”

  “Remember this: right now, you owe me your job. If I hadn’t paid the fine, you’d be serving the first day of a thirty-day prison term. And your job would not be waiting for you when you got out.” Having put Brian in his place, she softened her tone. “I promise that you won’t lose your job. You might even become something of a hero at the Eagle, by helping us to learn something about all this lunacy.”

  Katherine could see distaste on Gerald Waller’s face as she accompanied Brian into his office. The editor was not accustomed to receiving visitors who had just pleaded guilty to assault and battery. Waller greeted the young messenger with “Why do you do it, Brian? What big thrill do you find in fighting?”

  Brian launched into his performance. “Well, it’s to prove our team, the Arsenal, is better than their team.”

  “Surely that’s decided on the field of play.”

  “Our supporters, then. We prove our supporters are tougher than the pansies who follow them.”

  “Who’s ‘them’?”

  “Every other team.” Brian took a couple of swaggering steps around the editor’s office. “Highbury’s our turf. North Bank, that’s where we rule.”

  “North Bank,” Waller repeated. He’d seen the two words painted on countless walls throughout London. “The North Bank is that part of the stadium where the hard men stand, is it?”

  Brian’s swagger increased. “Where we stand.”

  Katherine decided it was time to take control. “Brian understands that without our help today, he’d be behind bars right now. To repay us, he’s willing to introduce us into his circle of friends. If we spend time with them, we’ll be in the best position to do what our chairman told us to do this morning: climb right into their minds, and learn what makes them tick. At the very least, we’ll get a solid human-interest series.”

  “You want me to pull you out of news and put you on a special assignment, is that it?”

  Katherine nodded. “I won’t do another Skrone Motors.”

  Waller glanced at Brian. “These friends of yours, how much danger will Mrs. Kassler be in?”

  “Absolutely none. They’ll do whatever I say.”

  In that moment, Katherine decided that Brian was not acting. What she saw now was him; the outraged martyr she’d seen in court had been the act. “I’ll also want Sid Hall,” she told Waller. “Besides being a good photographer, his presence always makes me feel safer.”

  Waller gave his approval to the assignment. Once outside the editor’s office, Katherine turned on Brian. “So, your friends will do whatever you say, will they? What happened to the poor little lad who was only defending himself?”

  “I bent the truth a little bit.”

  “To whom? To Mr. Waller, or to the magistrates?”

  Brian flashed a devilish grin. “Surely it’s less of a crime to lie to the magistrates than it is to lie to the editor of the Daily Eagle.”

  “You lied under oath. That’s perjury.”

  “Beats going to jail.”

  They reached the elevator. As Brian summoned the car, Katherine said, “Count yourself lucky you’re not my son. Never mind being in jail for thirty days — you wouldn’t be able to sit on your moped for thirty days!”

  Brian gave Katherine an even cheekier grin, and stuck out his bottom. “Go ahead, I dare you.”

  “Don’t push your luck.” She turned away as the elevator door slid back. Brian Waters was as fresh as they came, but in that freshness there was something she could not help liking.

  At precisely five-thirty, as Katherine was preparing to leave for the day, a shadow fell across her desk. She looked up to see Raymond Barnhill. Over his sportcoat and jeans, he wore a lined Burberry raincoat. Another part of the American uniform, Katherine reflected; where would good old Burberry’s be without Americans?

  “Come for your money?”

  “That would be nice.”

  “Here.” She pulled a white envelope from her desk drawer and slid it across to him. “One hundred and eighty pounds.”

  “That’s just the principal. Where’s the interest?”

  “Interest on a one-hour loan?”

  “I’m American, remember? We have people shooting each other on the streets, and the country’s run by the Mafia. In that kind of environment, would you seriously expect there to be such a thing as an interest-free loan?”

  “If I buy you a drink at El Vino’s, will that be interest enough?” She had no date with John Saxon that night, nor was she in any rush to get home. That seemed to be the pattern of her life at the moment: work, a couple of secretive trysts with Saxon each week, and play with the children on the weekends. One day she’d have to get a grip on herself again, reorganize her life into a sensible routine. Only right now, there was too much flux for her to even try.

  Barnhill smiled, and checked his watch. “I’d love to, Katherine, but some other time. The Int
ernational Press Agency’s a hard taskmaster, and I’ve got another assignment before I can call it quits today.” Without counting the money, he slipped the envelope into his raincoat pocket. “See you around,” he said with a cheerful wave, and walked quickly across the editorial floor to the elevator.

  Watching him go, Katherine felt slightly disappointed. She would have enjoyed having a drink with Raymond Barnhill. He was attractive, personable, and different from the other men she knew.

  Then she looked up at the gray-painted ceiling and asked God why she was even thinking such crazy thoughts. Wasn’t her life complicated enough, without adding to the turmoil?

  Chapter Ten

  SOCCER SPECIALS were trains put on by British Rail to carry supporters from one city to another when their team played on the road. The round-trip fare was a fraction of the regular fare, and the original premise of such trains had been to assist genuine supporters to follow their favorites around the country without bankrupting themselves. Unfortunately, the disruptive element also appreciated cheap fares. They soon took over, and the trains became known colloquially as the skinhead specials.

  The soccer special from London’s Euston station to Birmingham was scheduled to leave at midday on Saturday. “No mention is ever made of the special on any of the departure boards,” Sid Hall told Katherine as they parked close to the station, “because British Rail doesn’t want any decent member of the public boarding the train by mistake.”

  “Who told you that?” Katherine asked, laughing.