The Trouble With Tortoises

by Evelyn James

  The drunk was no longer lying in the gutter, he had been replaced by a brown dog, a skinny stray with worried eyes. Tommy went to pat it and the dog hunkered down, growled at him and ran off.

  “Poor fellow,” Tommy said, not offended by the canine’s reaction.

  “I could quite imagine you setting up a home for lost dogs,” Clara chuckled at him. “You have such a fondness for them.”

  “Now that is an idea, if I ever get tired of being a detective’s assistant,” Tommy grinned.

  The pub door was propped open and they could smell the interior before they set foot inside – aromas of rancid beer, pungent human body odour and stale smoke assailed the senses in an eye-watering concoction. Clara did her best not to gag as she entered the building, where the vile stink was so powerful it seemed to hang visibly in the air. Clouds of pipe and cigarette smoke filled the room with a creamy brown haze, starkly highlighted by the gas lamps hanging from the ceiling.

  All eyes turned on the newcomers as they stepped into the fog. The gazes were not friendly, but Clara had expected nothing less. Pushing between a pair of tables she reached the bar where the landlord stood glowering at her.

  He was a broad man in all dimensions. Tall enough that his hair just skimmed the low ceiling of his establishment, wide enough that he could easily block a door, and no one would get past, and fat enough that his belly forced him to stand a foot back from the bar. Fortunately, his arms were long, which enabled him to reach pint pots onto the counter. He was rubbing a metal tankard with a cloth, in the usual habit of landlords across the country. It seemed to be a habit they all acquired the second they started pulling pints.

  “Is this the Red Lion?” Clara asked politely, ignoring the obvious tension in the room.

  A silence had fallen around them. She could feel dozens of eyes drilling into her back with the same message – you are not welcome here. She did not allow the sensation to rattle her.

  “Why don’t you go read the sign outside?” The landlord sneered.

  “You don’t have a sign,” Tommy pointed out. “I mean, there is a bracket where it must have been, but it is gone.”

  This information upset the landlord, who briefly turned his intimidating state from Clara to his customers.

  “Which of you thieving buffoons has stolen my pub sign?” He snapped at them. “Last time it was Jimmy Smith, but he is six feet under, so you can’t blame him!”

  There was a uniform silence from the pub clientele. It seemed they all knew better than to reply to this leading question.

  “Whoever done it, better bring it back at once! And if it has gone for firewood like last time, I suggest someone gets handy with a paintbrush and makes me a new one or I’ll start watering down your beer again to pay for a replacement!”

  There were groans of protest, but the landlord was unmoved.

  “I want a new sign by tomorrow night,” he marked his words with the tip of a finger banging on the top of the bar. “Got it?”

  Mutters of acceptance followed this statement. Who was to say if the sign thief was among the customers? But even if he wasn’t, it seemed the regulars would make sure there was a new sign hanging up by tomorrow. The landlord was obviously not a man to be argued with.

  “Then, this is the Red Lion?” Clara asked once the situation had calmed down again.

  “What does it matter to you?” The landlord demanded.

  Clara held her nerve.

  “I am trying to get hold of Mr Alf Martin,” Clara explained. “And I was told to look for him in the Red Lion. I have some important information for Mr Martin and I really must find him urgently.”

  “He isn’t here and even if he was, I wouldn’t point him out to you,” the landlord sneered at her.

  “Why ever not?” Clara’s temper was finally getting the better of her. “I have been perfectly polite, and I am not here to cause trouble. Yet I have received an unpleasant reception wherever I turn.”

  “That is because you are a pair of toffs, and toffs never do us folk any good,” the landlord growled.

  “And what, may I ask, has brought you to that conclusion? I can quite frankly tell you I am a good deal lower on the social scale to a real ‘toff’. I don’t own a carriage, or even a horse, I only take the bus when necessary and walk everywhere I can. I do buy quality clothing, when I can afford to, but this coat is already two winters old, and I have no intention of replacing it until the elbows have worn out. If I am what you consider a toff, then I have to wonder what word you have for those considerably better off than me.”

  The landlord paused just for a second as this tirade concluded, then his narrow eyes grew smaller.

  “You are not one of us, and that is that.”

  “That is a far more understandable criticism,” Clara replied. She sensed Tommy moving uneasily behind her, keeping watch for trouble. “And there is always a natural order to these things, a sense of who belongs and who does not. I am not a familiar face and that arouses suspicion. Would it assist if I was to return every night so that I might become a regular?”

  “No, it would not and I would not serve you either,” the landlord persisted.

  “Yet I would become familiar.”

  “You would still not belong.”

  “Look, we just want to buy something off Mr Martin,” Tommy said suddenly, he was growing increasingly disconcerted by the gazes of the customers, and feared they were ready to start something violent. “Good money too, would have done him a favour, since the thing he has the police are looking for.”

  Clara wanted to thump him, but the landlord’s eyes opened wider and he lost some of his belligerence.

  “What’s this?”

  Seeing that she had his attention, Clara took advantage.

  “What my brother says is correct. Mr Martin has come upon an item quite innocently that is wanted by the police. They, so far, have not discovered he has the item, but it shall only be a matter of time before they do and then they shall search his house. If they find the said item in his possession, he shall have no hope, which is why we are offering to buy it and take the trouble off his hands. He can claim to the police he never had the thing in the first place, that way.”

  There was some talking in the pub, hushed voices as the drinkers discussed this revelation. The landlord flicked his eyes around the room, a new curiosity lighting up his face.

  “Alf doesn’t know this item is nicked, you say?”

  “We suspect he traded for it, unwitting that it would bring him such trouble. I have full information on how the item was removed from its rightful owners, of course, but I have no intention of divulging that publicly,” Clara responded.

  “Why do you want it, then?” The landlord asked, proving to be sharper than Clara had hoped.

  “That is my own business,” she said firmly. “All that matters is that I shall pay for the item and save Mr Martin a lot of trouble.”

  The landlord rapped his fingers on the bar counter in a staccato rhythm.

  “A finder’s fee,” he mumbled. “I could claim one.”

  Clara allowed him to consider this possibility, she just hoped he wasn’t going to ask her to pay him to direct her to Alf Martin, she had already wasted money buying Mr Perth’s fleeting good graces.

  The fingers continued to tap.

  “We are wasting our time, Clara,” Tommy said loudly, so everyone in the room could hear. “Mr Perth gave us Mr Martin’s address, let’s try there.”

  Clara turned from the bar and pretended to start to leave with Tommy.

  “Wait!” The landlord called to them.

  Clara glanced over her shoulder, making no effort to turn back. She acted as if she had already resigned herself to finding no help at the pub.

  “Alf is never at home, that man’s a rover, right lads?” The landlord looked to his customers for support. They obediently agreed with him. “What you need is someone to let you know when he is around. You’ll be on a wild goose chase, otherwise.
”

  “You have already informed us that no one here would help us,” Clara pointed out coolly.

  The landlord laughed, a clearly unnatural thing for him to do, as it sounded more like a fox’s shrill bark and seemed utterly humourless.

  “That was then, before we realised you were not going to cause trouble for us,” he said, placating her. “We thought you were the sort who come into a pub like this to snoot at how the lesser sort lives. We have those people from time to time, folk who want to ‘rough it’ for a while. Treat us like animals at the zoo to watch and chuckle at. You can imagine that makes us sensitive.”

  Clara finally turned around and took a step towards the bar again.

  “I have never thought of anyone as beneath me just because they did not have the advantages I have been lucky to receive,” she said in a calm, level voice. She wanted everyone to hear her. “I have always tried to treat people as equals, whether they are the coal man or a lord. Quite frankly, I find it far easier to relate to the coal man.”

  A slight ripple of laughter greeted this statement.

  “I am sorry that in the past you have endured ridicule or other misfortune from passing strangers,” Clara pressed on. “That would understandably make you reluctant to welcome unfamiliar faces, but you also do yourselves a disservice by acting with such resentment all the time. I am not here to disturb your lives or get anyone into trouble. Quite the opposite, I am here to help.”

  “Now that is all settled,” the landlord spoke almost breathless, fearing an opportunity might slip through his fingers, “why don’t we come to some sort of agreement? Here is how I see it. Alf is always on the wander. He does odd jobs and dosses down where he pleases. More than once he has happily fallen asleep in the corner of this pub and I have left him there for the night. He goes home once in a while, but his mother drives him up the wall, always nagging him to get a decent, stable job, as if there are many of those about!”

  More laughter, some of it bitter, came from the drinkers at this statement.

  “Anyway, he always pops in here at some point,” the landlord’s tone had softened considerably. “Next time he does, I shall get a message straight to you and have him stay put. How does that sound?”

  Clara knew she was going to accept; if the landlord was telling the truth, then she could be chasing Alf for weeks, and all that time Jeremiah’s life hung in the balance. However, she made the pretence of thinking about what he proposed. The landlord’s smile froze on his lips and his anxiety was palpable. He wanted a chance of receiving some of that money Tommy had promised and he was scared he had already blown his opportunity.

  Clara relented once she felt he had stewed long enough.

  “Very well, it seems that would be the best way of enabling us to get in touch with Mr Martin.”

  The landlord sighed with relief.

  “You won’t regret this,” he promised her.

  Clara was not so sure, but she gave him her address so he would know where to send a message. Then she departed the pub with Tommy.

  “Think it will work?” Her brother asked.

  “It’s worth a try,” Clara replied. “We will still go to his house, but not tonight. I have had enough of this place.”

  Tommy nodded in agreement.

  “Think Jeremiah is all right in that biscuit tin?”

  “Well, I am hopeful he is being kept indoors, so at least he should not freeze to death, but I can’t imagine there being a lot of air in a biscuit tin with the lid on.”

  “Oh,” said Tommy.

  “If that is the case, I am afraid he shall be long dead. He has been in that tin two days, and if someone has not thought to lift the lid then there will be no hope.”

  Tommy looked despondent at this information.

  “That is a worst-case scenario,” Clara explained. “I am hopeful it will not come to that.”

  Tommy gave her a sad look.

  “It is the first time I have thought of a biscuit tin as something lethal.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The following morning, Clara and Tommy took Captain Laker to the house where the shootout had occurred just a few days before. The police had boarded up the lower doors and windows, but there was no one guarding the place as the Chief Constable considered the case closed. He had numerous living men in his custody from the raid who needed to be dealt with, along with several recuperating in the hospital from gunshot wounds. He had no interest in the handful who had lost their lives during the fracas. As far as the Chief Constable was concerned, Jao Leong had been a victim of her own criminal intentions. He did not see the greater picture – that Inspector Park-Coombs’ life could be forfeit if Clara could not convince Brilliant Chang his sister had been murdered by someone inside the house.

  Clara had mulled this situation over and over, kept awake at night by the complexities of the nature of Brilliant Chang. On the one hand he had wished to stop his sister, had realised she was a threat to him and had helped Clara to pull the strings that ended up in a shootout. On the other, he was so devoted to his sister that her death and his resulting grief had sent him into a savage spiral of madness and vengeance. He had warned her he would take that vengeance out on Park-Coombs if she could not find him the real killer, and she had no doubt he would live up to his threats.

  The sun had decided to shine that day and it was surprisingly pleasant in the street with the morning frost melting and the yellow light illuminating the brick work. Harold looked up at the tall building. Most of the windows were broken, some had been pierced by bullets, others had been smashed by local yobs throwing bricks or stones at them. There had been a lot of resentment for Leong’s gang; many of her men were from London and they had terrorised the Brighton inhabitants, criminal or not, who lived on their turf. With the gang destroyed, it was hardly a shock that resentful locals had decided on a campaign of minor vandalism.

  Harold moved along the road, head up, feet crunching on shards of glass.

  “Which window did this lady die at?” He asked.

  Tommy stretched up an arm.

  “Top floor, middle window as we look at it.”

  Harold narrowed his eyes.

  “And where were the police shooting from?”

  Clara took a pace back into the road and indicated where the unpaved surface was faintly marked by the wheels of a vehicle.

  “This was where the army lorry stopped,” she explained. “Most of the shooting happened from behind it. Only after the initial resistance died down did the army move forward, followed by the police.”

  Harold came and stood where Clara was and looked upwards again. He paced around, sometimes crouching, sometimes kneeling on the ground, always looking up at the window.

  “Nice sniping spot,” he said, motioning upwards to where Leong had stood. “Do both those windows on the left open into the same room?”

  “They do,” Clara confirmed.

  “Tommy will know this as well as I do, but if you ever went into a village during the war and were expecting the enemy to still be present, it was high windows that worried you most.”

  Tommy was nodding along with Harold.

  “You see, a high window like that is ideal for a sniper to see all the way down the road in either direction, and he is firing down on people, which is even better. Remember our friend gravity? If we shoot downward, the drag of gravity helps the bullet keep momentum, though, at such a short distance you would not really need to worry about needing extra force,” Harold stood and paced out the rough size of a military lorry. “Here is the other thing, from up there I would like to bet our imaginary sniper would have a prime view of everyone behind this lorry, could pick them off with ease. Better still, with those wide walls between the windows, the sniper could keep in cover as they aimed, making themselves as small a target as possible.”

  “Only, there was no sniper at that window,” Clara pointed out, feeling Harold had gone off topic.

  “Wasn’t there?” He asked, l
ooking slightly disappointed. “The woman had no gun?”

  “Not when she was found, and no one was shot from that window,” Clara assured him.

  “Missed opportunity,” Harold mused. “Then why was she at the window?”

  “Well, that is a question we have had trouble with,” Clara admitted. “It might be that Leong was taking a look to see what was happening outside. Things were going badly for her men. They were outnumbered and the military had better guns. Rifles against pistols.”

  “What is the other possibility?” Harold asked.

  “That Leong was not looking out the window, she was stood near it, perhaps listening to the gunfight, but was not close enough to see outside,” Clara pulled a wry smile. “Her body was found a little further from the window than you would expect if she had been stood by it, but we can’t rule out that she was shot and took a step back, or even the force of the blow threw her back.”

  Harold adjusted his glasses on his nose and shaded his eyes from the sun.

  “Can’t see the bullet having enough force from this distance to have had the power to knock her off her feet,” he said. “Honestly, this is a terrible angle to try to shoot someone in that window. What time of day did the shootout happen.”

  “The early hours,” Clara answered.

  “Even worse,” Harold frowned. “You wouldn’t be able to see a person up there. It would have to be a lucky shot to hit them and why would you fire up at that window unless you knew someone was there? I mean, if the woman had shot down, then I could understand attempts being made to take her out as a sniper. But if she had no gun, she could not have drawn attention to herself that way.”

  “I had not thought of that,” Clara confessed. “What about an accidental shot?”

  “Hard to see how that would happen,” Harold wrinkled his nose thoughtfully. “A soldier is too well drilled to accidentally shoot into the air, especially during such an operation. The police I can’t comment on. Was anyone shot while stood behind this lorry.”