Tuppenny Hat Detective

by Brian Sellars

  They thanked Bunny Parfitt and left him in his shed, sniggering like a fool amongst his paradise of clutter and junk. He had done a good job for them, and Billy was very grateful, though annoyed by his silly giggling.

  Yvonne too was still giggling helplessly as they left. Billy quickly caught her mood and joined in, thinking it was Bunny's strange behaviour that had tickled her. 'He's as barmy as a loaf,' he chuckled. 'Did you see him sniggering like a fool?'

  'Take a look,' Yvonne said, giggling helplessly. She was pointing to the wing mirror on a Lipton's Tea van parked at the kerbside.

  Bemused, Billy peered in the mirror. His reflection stared back at him. One eye had a thick ring of black around it. He looked like a Panda.

  *

  When night came, Billy struggled to stay awake. As usual, his mother had allowed him to stay up to listen to the BBC's Light Programme. It had been "Take It From Here" that night, which finished at nine-thirty. But staying awake until midnight from then, after a busy and exciting day - well …?

  *

  The following night after a serious wigging from Yvonne, Billy tried again. This time he took a wet flannel to bed with him and kept washing his face with it. It worked. He heard his parents come to bed in the room below his attic bedroom, and waited for what seemed an age before counting one hundred in crocodiles. The house was silent, and beyond the little attic window the city slumbered. Still wearing his day clothes he climbed out of bed, donned his trilby hat and tip-toed silently downstairs and out of the back door.

  All was black and cold. There was no moon and not a star in the sky. In the empty street his shoes clattered on the polished cobbles, as he dodged from shadow to shadow, avoiding the greenish glare of the street's gently hissing gas lamps. The sound of approaching voices sent him scuttling to hide under a laurel bush in Polly Thackeray's front garden. Two policemen plodded by, so close he could have reached out and touched their capes. Their voices carried strangely on the chill night air. He waited until it was safe to move out of hiding, and then stood up slowly, but froze on hearing the sound of something bulldozing through the laurels. He dived for cover again, terrified even to breath. His mind invented all manner of monsters coming for him: a crazed grizzly bear, vampire or werewolf, teeth bared and salivating.

  Round the corner of the street, out of sight from Billy, chill darkness and night noises were not new to Stan Sutcliffe. He was often out at this late hour, if not tottering home from some pub he would be loitering near the scene of his next crime. Stepping into a shop doorway to relieve himself, he luckily missed being spotted by the two patrolling policemen who, at that moment, appeared from a side street. Keeping out of sight, he watched them as they moved away towards the tram terminus.

  Barely a hundred yards away, a sigh of relief deflated Billy's chest as his wirehaired terrier, thrilled to see him, burst from the bushes. 'Ruff! Chuffin eck! You nearly scared me to death,' he whispered hoarsely. 'Whatta yer doing here? Go home.'

  Telling a dog to go home is like asking the tide not to come in. Billy knew he was wasting his time, so considered his options. He could tie him up and leave him, or take him home and risk his parents hearing him, or take him with him. He thought of the commotion Ruff would cause if he left him tied to Polly Thackeray's laurel and sighed with resignation. The dog would have to come with him. Once the little dog somehow realised he was, so to speak, on the team, Billy could swear he assumed a slinky, foxy demeanour, as if getting into character. 'OK you stupid mutt, but be quiet.'

  'Well lookee here,' Stan Sutcliffe muttered to himself, as he saw Billy Perks creep out of the same side street from which the two policemen had emerged. 'What's Perks doing out this late, and wearing that stupid hat?' He drew back into the shadows to watch him.

  At the Ebenezer Chapel Billy slipped out of the gas light's glare and vanished into the blackness of the chapel yard. Stan Sutcliffe crept from hiding and followed.

  Billy climbed the boiler cellar gate, and felt his way down the stone steps to the padlocked door. Ruff followed, stepping effortlessly between the gate's rusting bars. Billy shooed him gently aside at the rotting door. He daren't yet use the torch he'd taken off his mother's bicycle in case someone saw the light. He would save it for inside the building, and for searching the secret drawer. For now, he was relying on carrots. He had eaten seven in the last two days. Enough, he thought, to warrant wearing sunglasses at midnight, if half of what people said about carrots was true.

  The cellar door gave way as soon as he shouldered it. Rather too soon really and he tumbled headlong after its splintering wreckage to land sprawling on a slimy, wet stone floor. Ruff watched curiously, his head tilted to one side. The torch had gone spinning away in the darkness and vanished. Ruff sniffed at it out and stood by it, waiting, as if he knew his master would need it once he stopped crawling about on his hands and knees, blindly patting the puddles on the floor.

  Sweat trickled down Billy's face, yet his teeth were chattering. His clothing stuck to his body, and his hair felt glued to his forehead. Finding the torch at last, he swung its beam around the basement. Soot stained walls surrounded him in an area about the size of a garage. Half the stone-flagged floor lay submerged beneath slimy black water. From a coal shoot grating, high in one wall, a thin beam from streetlight leaned in and struck the water's surface to project eerie reflections onto the ceiling. Bits of old pipe, and a partially dismantled boiler cluttered the rest of the floor; unidentifiable, rusting chunks of industrial sculpture that had not seen service in years. Ruff peed on a pressure gauge and sniffed the hinge of a furnace door.

  Billy stood motionless, feeling taut and panicky. He tried to compose himself. Calm was called for. He took off his hat, hung it on a rib of dead boiler and wiped his sweating brow. What would Dick Barton do now? 'He'd get on with the job,' he told himself, struggling to mimic his hero. 'It's alreight for him though, he's got Snowy and Jock to back him up. All I've got is thee, mutt.' The dog thanked him for the vote of confidence with a wag of his tail, and sniffed at rat droppings.

  Billy's feet were soaked. Water seeped in through the lace holes of his shoes and made strange lapping noises as he paddled about, treading on unseen objects beneath its slimy surface. His gaze followed his torch beam around the walls searching for the entrance to the heating duct. A large spider scuttled out from behind a veil of cobweb and ran along the wall. Billy shivered, and pretended he was not scared.

  Shuffling noises from outside gave him a start. He imagined rats and monsters creeping down after him. Straightening up he stretched his shoulders, and tried to dismiss his fears. 'Come on, let's get on with it,' he told the dog, grateful now for his presence. Ruff eagerly accepted the challenge.

  In the cool blackness beyond the rusting gate, Stan Sutcliffe felt around in the rubbish littering the ground and found a length of old iron pipe about the size of a cricket bat. He hefted it to his shoulder like a club and prepared to climb the gate.

  In the boiler room below, Billy had found what he was looking for, a small square tunnel entrance set at about waist height in the wall. It was just big enough for him to climb inside on all fours. The spider reappeared in the faltering torch beam and scurried into the tunnel, vanishing into its unknown depths. It seemed to be inviting Billy to follow.

  When Sutcliffe reached the bottom of the steps, he gently pushed open the wrecked door with his rusty metal club and peered inside.

  ………

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Behind his bedroom curtains, Arnold Pearce shivered in his pyjamas. The bare oilcloth covering his bedroom floor offered no comfort to his chilly toes. He owned carpet slippers, but dare not move from the window to fetch them for fear he might miss something. This was the third successive night that he had spent the small hours peeking into the darkness. He was trying to catch a prowler suspected of watching his house. He would not risk leaving the window for a second, and so endured the discomfort of the cold lino and kept his prying eyes keened.<
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  A neighbour had warned him that they had seen someone lurking in the darkness near Arnold's garden shed - nothing more than that. Arnold's imagination had filled in the rest.

  Carefully sealing the chink in the curtains, he drew back from the window and lit a cigarette, shielding the flame in his hands. Annoyed with himself, he reviewed his situation. He had his job, and thanks to his war record, a whole set of new friends. His prospects were excellent. He had even been asked to stand as a city councillor at the next elections. The local Tories wanted a war hero, someone young, handsome, and respectable. Arnold was their ideal man. They claimed it was because he was a local man made good. He knew better. What they liked was that he was a war hero, highly decorated, and with just enough facial scarring from his war wounds to make him interesting to women and admired by men. The future looked good.

  Even so, he felt deeply uneasy. For two weeks he'd been disturbed by the nagging sensation that someone was following him. He had not actually seen anyone. In fact, the only evidence for his suspicions was an occasional tingling at the back of his neck. However, it was enough to set his nerves on edge, but was it real or paranoia? Heaven forbid. On his worse days he had even felt that somebody had been inside his house - that his things had been moved, just a fraction. He had reported it to the police, but they had so far failed to act, pointing out coldly that he had never found anything missing, nor seen actual signs of a forced entry. According to them, no crime had been committed. Weary of his complaints, they promised to keep a special eye on the street. They did not actually accuse him of paranoia, though he suspected it. They were certainly fobbing him off, and so far he had seen little evidence of them doing anything. In fact, he had not seen a constable down the crescent for weeks, and neither had his neighbours. He knew this to be true because he had been to their houses and asked them all.

  Things would be different, he assured himself, when he became an elected councillor. He would accept no feeble excuses then.

  *

  Across the city on its northwest border, Yvonne Sparkes could not sleep either. Tossing and turning for what seemed hours in her tiny bedroom, eyes wide open, she lay staring at the rocking shadows of trees cast on the ceiling by the glow of the street lamps. Wild, irrational fears filled her mind as she thought of Billy and the dangers he had pledged to face that night. Tormenting questions buzzed in her brain. Would he be able to stay awake this time? Would he escape his house without waking his parents? Would he find the sideboard and its secret drawer? Had she eaten the last Minto from her bedside table? She sat up in bed and peered through her window.

  Somewhere in the night out there, Billy was facing dragons, and here, in her bedroom, the Minto could not be found.

  Beneath the Ebenezer Chapel, the old heating tunnel bored through the blackness. Billy squinted ahead as he crawled towards its invisible end somewhere in the chapel's walls. The tunnel was arrow straight. Going on all fours, he had just enough room to lift his face and peer ahead, though collecting cobwebs in his hair. He had ruled out using the torch, mainly because the battery was failing and he needed to conserve its power for searching the old lady's sideboard, but also, it was easier to pretend there were no spiders if he couldn't see them. But then something horrible and wet brushed his leg. 'Rats!' he squealed, bashing his head painfully on the tunnel's stone roof as shock tried to uncoil him. He was shivering with terror, and his throat tightened as if he would choke.

  The wet thing moved in the blackness and licked his face. 'Ruff you idiot!' Relief swilled over him, briefly draining his tension. He ruffled the ears on the little terrier's nuzzling head. 'Thank gimbals you're here boy, but don't do that again.'

  Apart from imagining spiders everywhere, crawling along the tunnel was not difficult. It had a slight upward gradient leading to the floor above. It was dry and gritty, and though it hurt his knees a bit, it was easy going. Several yards in, he sensed the wall to his right veering away into a black void. It was disorienting, and made him feel the need to get his bearings again, so he risked using the torch.

  He was astonished to find himself beside a deep alcove, big enough for a grown man to lay out comfortably. That was precisely what someone had been doing. There was a bed of newspapers and cardboard, with a couple of neatly folded army blankets on top. Beside the bed was a cardboard box. He peeped inside and found a strange assortment of items. There was a pair of scissors, a table fork, a soup dish, a can opener, and a Dandelion and Burdock bottle. But the thing that trapped his attention was a blue, leather covered jewellery case. It had gold coloured hinges and a flip catch. Embossed in gold on its lid was a military insignia. Billy flipped the catch with his thumbnail and carefully popped the lid. Inside, on a bed of blue velvet, five military medals lay neatly displayed in a row. The silk lined vault of the lid held a crumpled photograph. His fingers gently slid over the shining medals. The ribbons were as bright as new. The photograph showed a group of young men sitting on boxes and jerrycans. They were playing cards. An ammunition box served as their card table. The location was a military airfield. RAF Wellington bombers lined up in a sunny haze behind the men.

  The torchlight flickered and dimmed making him feel panicky. He quickly raked through the remaining items in the box. There were a couple of empty beer bottles, some candle ends, and a dog-eared clipping from a newspaper. Billy had no need to read it. He recognised it as one of the articles The Sheffield Telegraph had printed a few weeks earlier about the Star Woman's death. He left it in the box, certain there was nothing else there to attract his interest and switched off the precious torchlight to conserve its battery.

  In blackness again, he felt cold and isolated. The little alcove had seemed almost homely with its bed and personal possessions. He had found it strangely comforting. Now he was blundering onwards again, his face tormented by unseen spiders' webs. Sharp grains of grit abraded his bare knees and knuckles.

  The tunnel was longer than he had expected. When he'd briefly flashed his torch beam up it before setting off, the end had not looked so far away. Even the boiler room's slimy, flooded floor, was beginning to seem inviting, compared to his endless crawl in black, airless confinement. He felt trapped and squashed, as if the walls were closing in. He began having doubts about where it would lead him.

  'Poncy Perks! Where's tha think th'art going?' Stan Sutcliffe's sneering voice called from the blackness behind him.

  Billy's heart pounded. How did he get here? Had he been following him all the time? He scuttled faster to get as far away as his painful knees would carry him. He knew that if Stan came after him, he would be stuck and helpless, unable to turn round to defend himself. As it was, escape looked impossible unless he could get out at the top end of the tunnel. For a second he considered retreating to the alcove. At least there was room in there to turn round. He might even find a weapon of some sort for defence. The trouble was Stan already sounded very close. Going back to the alcove would just make him closer. He might not make it before Stan grabbed him.

  A few more knee skinning yards and he at last reached the first of the heating grilles. Peering through its decorative piercing he could just make out the faint glow of street lamps illuminating the chapel's opaque leaded windows. He had no idea which grille it was. It could be one up near the organ, or down under the lectern, he could not tell. He didn't care either. All he wanted was to escape from Stan Sutcliffe.

  In the gloom, he could just make out the tunnel's route on to other grilles and the faint light that seeped in from them. But he was alarmed to see the walls converging. The tunnel became progressively narrower before coming to its end. It was useless trying to go further. He would be stuck. Desperation drove him. He pushed at the heating grille with all his strength, but it did not budge. He reversed the force and heaved at it with painful, grasping fingers. It was fixed solid. Again, he pushed, then pulled, trying to free it with a rhythmic rocking motion. It did not move and the bronze-coated metal was soon slick with blood, his
blood. He pushed again, but his grip was weakening, his hands and knees ever more painful. Sweat and sooty tears stung his eyes. It seemed hopeless. There was no escape.

  'You're stuck, Perks. You can't get away. I've got thee cornered like a rat. And guess what? I'm going to roast thee alive.' Stan struck a match, its brilliant flare illuminated his vicious grin.

  Terrified, Billy gaped back down the tunnel. Stan was pulling sheets of newspaper from the bedding in the alcove. When he had gathered several he started to back towards the tunnel entrance, laughing evilly. Billy was mesmerised. Stan seemed crazed. Was he really mad enough to do it? Surely even he wasn't stupid enough to set a fire beneath the chapel? He couldn't mean it. And hadn't he already had his revenge behind the rabbit hutches? Was he really going to burn the chapel down, didn't he realise … Billy shook the heating grille with all his might, but it wouldn't budge.

  At the tunnel's mouth Stan eased himself down to the boiler room floor. Horrified, Billy watched him roll up the newspaper to make a torch and put a match to it. Luckily the flame didn't catch. Ruff whimpered and burrowed in behind his master. Stan struck another match, laughing wickedly. A faint blue flame glimmered and sparkled weakly before suddenly flaring up, flooding the tunnel with its hot brilliance. Sutcliffe gazed at it, a look of evil fascination on his face.

  Acrid smoke began to reach Billy, stinging his eyes and nostrils. He pulled his dog close fearing for him as much as for himself. Blinking and coughing, he rubbed his eyes on his sleeve. When he looked again, Stan was no longer in the mouth of the tunnel. The flaming torch was not there either, though it was still burning. Its unseen flames illuminated the old boiler room walls, picking out every sooty detail of them.