by David Field
Not really expecting to meet with any early success, Jack knocked heavily on the outside door of the house in Cadogan Street, conveniently located for the local lunatic asylum. The man who came to the door reeked of cheap rum and stale sweat and glared at Jack through eyes bleary with recently disturbed sleep. Jack raised his police badge high in the air as he stepped back to avoid the nauseating combination of odours.
‘Mr Taylor?’
‘Who wants him?’
‘Nobody, I’d hazard a guess,’ Jack replied sarcastically, ‘but I’m really looking for two young men you used to rent out at one time — names of “West” and “Campbell”.’
‘Yer want ’em both at the same time?’ Taylor leered back at him.
‘I don’t want them for the purpose you normally hire them out for,’ Jack persisted. ‘I want to speak to them in connection with an enquiry I’m conducting.’
‘This got owt ter do wi’ Oscar?’
Jack nodded. ‘Do you know him?’
‘Used ter. ’E were me best customer at one time, ‘til ’e started growin’ ’is own. But I’m s’posed ter be goin’ ter court next week sometime, ter tell the nice man all about it.’
‘Along with West and Campbell?’
Taylor shook his head. ‘Not Westy. ’E left town on account’ve ’is ’ealth when ’e ’eard that lawyers was lookin’ for ’im. The same ones as found me an’ offered me a twenny ter tell ’em ’ow I used ter set Oscar up wi’ boys what would pretend ter be chatted up afore ’e got their trousers down.’
‘And what about Campbell?’
‘Step inside, my friend,’ Taylor said invitingly as he moved to one side of the dingy hallway with its peeling wallpaper, and with considerable reluctance Jack followed him until they reached a door that was partially open and opened further when Taylor kicked it with his boot.
There was urgent movement from inside a dirty mass of bed linen and soiled covers, and a dishevelled unshaven face peered out at Jack, then broke into a forced smile that was sickening in its intensity and its exposure of rotten gums.
‘Customer?’ the gums asked.
Jack involuntarily shook his head in revulsion. ‘Some other time, perhaps,’ his warped sense of humour obliged him to reply.
‘Sae whit youse wantin’ wi’ me?’ the youth enquired in a voice that had never left Glasgow, even though its owner had, ten years previously.
‘Some information,’ Jack replied as he tried to limit his intake of breath to the minimum consistent with continued life.
The youth rolled out of the bedding onto the floor, completely naked, and Taylor grinned back at Jack sheepishly as his eyebrows shot up in silent enquiry.
‘Well, ’e needs ter practice,’ was Taylor’s justification, as the youth in question farted loudly, then began urinating into a bucket in the corner before unstoppering a bottle of beer that lay on the table and sliding into one of its accompanying chairs.
‘Why shid ah tell youse anythin’?’ the youth demanded.
Jack slid his police badge carefully onto the table top, keeping as far from Campbell as he could. In its inner fold was a pound note and the youth thanked him before taking a long slug from the beer bottle, and following it up with an explosive belch.
‘You are named Campbell?’ Jack asked.
‘Aye, Jamie Campbell, frae Cambuslang if ye’ve ever heard o’ it. Is that all youse is wantin’?’
‘Not quite, but almost,’ Jack replied. ‘Did you ever get the real names of any of your male customers?’
‘Whit dae ye think?’ Campbell chortled.
‘So you’ve no idea if they were members of the aristocracy, or royal family, or anything like that?’
‘A couple o’ them was proper queens, right enough,’ Campbell chuckled, and Taylor joined in the joke. Jack decided that both his health and his temper demanded an early departure, so he extracted the photograph of the three men at the university reunion dinner that he’d received from Carson and laid it carefully on the table in front of Campbell.
‘Recognise anyone here?’
Campbell nodded. ‘Two o’ them anyway,’ Campbell confirmed.
‘An’ the one on the left’s there’s that Carson bloke,’ Taylor added as he peered over Jack’s shoulder.
‘Which two do you recognise, Jamie?’ Jack enquired gently, as a light appeared to be dawning in this shadowy world that he’d recently been occupying.
‘The short one in the middle. ’E liked ter dress up as a Mary-Anne while I did the business wi’ ’im.’
‘And the other one?’ Jack held his breath for a different reason than previously.
‘That yin on the right,’ Jamie confirmed. ‘The tall yin — ’e always liked tae be facin’ me when we wiz dein’ it. Not like maest o’ ’em, that prefers it frae behind.’
‘There’s no doubt in your mind that the one on the right was a customer of yours?’ Jack demanded excitedly.
‘Dae ye ever forget someyin ye’ve done that to?’ Campbell demanded.
Jack decided to leave while he still retained his dinner. Outside, he took in a few deep breaths, and somehow even the faint smell of horse dung seemed fresh and clean. Then he smiled as he began to walk back in the direction of the bus stop in Sloane Street. No wonder Uncle Percy was enquiring about Ryan Industries.
Chapter Nine
‘So what have we learned?’ Percy asked as Esther placed the bowl of boiled potatoes in the centre of the kitchen table, next to the steaming steak and kidney pie that had gone into the oven as soon as Percy had appeared with it.
‘I’ve learned that I vomit easily if you ask me to interview rent boys, ponces and associated riff-raff. I absolutely refuse to expose myself to any more of them,’ Jack insisted.
‘I hope you didn’t,’ Esther quipped. ‘It certainly sounds as if you were right, Uncle Percy, and that Stranmillis was planning to disappear quietly. That telegram he sent seemed to be confirming that someone else called “Bunbury” would be taking his place at Crewe. Did you find any evidence that this had happened?’
‘I haven’t got as far as Crewe yet,’ Percy replied, ‘but it will be interesting to learn whether or not the Pullman was still attached to the train when it pulled out of there and headed for Holyhead.’
‘From what you learned at Euston,’ Jack added, not wishing to be left out, ‘it sounds as if Stranmillis was taking most of his clothes with him. That tends to confirm a plan to fade from sight for a lengthy period of time.’
‘But why employ a substitute?’ Esther queried. ‘Stranmillis quite obviously had no intention of appearing in Dublin, where he was presumably well known, and yet he went to the trouble of arranging for this “Bunbury” chap to replace him on the train, if we’re right about that. Why not simply walk off the train at some point?’
‘Weighed down with all that luggage?’ Jack offered. ‘Sounds to me more as if he was planning on switching to another means of transport somewhere during the journey — maybe another carriage at Crewe, or another train at a later stop.’
‘According to the train timetable,’ Percy objected, ‘there was no other stop. Once the train pulled out of Crewe Station, it was non-stop to Holyhead.’
‘But the Pullman wasn’t on the end of the train at Holyhead?’ Esther asked by way of confirmation.
Percy shook his head. ‘No. So, somehow or other, it was “disappeared” between Crewe and Holyhead.’
‘But why?’ Jack objected. ‘Why not just let it go through to Holyhead without him in it?’
‘Two reasons,’ Percy pointed out. ‘First of all, the luggage. Why take it with you in the first place, if you intend to abandon it? And if you don’t intend to abandon it, you need to get it off the Pullman before it reaches Holyhead, where a substitute — who presumably joined the train at Crewe, according to Stranmillis’s telegraph to Patrick Ryan — will use your ticket. The second reason proceeds from the first — you need the Pullman to transport the luggage to somewhere other than
Dublin.’
‘That’s something else that doesn’t really make sense,’ Esther objected. ‘Why go to the trouble of sending a substitute to use your boat ticket, when you intend to disappear somewhere in England, and never set foot in Dublin?’
‘To throw us off the scent,’ Percy explained. ‘If I hadn’t come across that telegram alerting us to some sort of substitution at Crewe, we’d still be investigating the possibility that Stranmillis somehow vanished during the boat crossing — by being pushed overboard, or perhaps committing suicide.’
‘At least, as the result of my enquiries, we know that Ryan and Stranmillis were both Mary-Annes,’ Jack reminded them proudly.
‘I’d already deduced that,’ Percy replied, as Jack’s proud smile evaporated.
‘How?’ he challenged him.
‘He used the name “Dermy” in his telegram,’ Percy pointed out. ‘Obviously a diminution of his real name — “Dermot” — but also a sort of sweetheart name by which you’re known to someone emotionally close to you.’
‘A boyfriend, you mean?’ Esther said.
Jack snorted. ‘You make it sound so “twee”. Believe me, what they get up to in these depraved circles is far more sickening.’
‘Be that as it may,’ Esther insisted, ‘they clearly had a relationship that they might wish to keep hidden from public knowledge. So if we’re right about Stranmillis disappearing in order to preserve his reputation, he was also doing a favour for Ryan, and this was why Ryan was helping him.’
‘Well deduced,’ Percy replied, ‘and we clearly need to look more closely at Mr Ryan, and his many business concerns. We also need to do the same with Stranmillis — in fact we should probably have done that already. Jack, that’s your next job.’
‘I thought you wanted me to attend the trial?’ Jack objected.
‘You’ve got two more working days before that begins, even if it starts on time,’ Percy reminded him, ‘and in the meantime I intend to try my hand at being a theatre critic.’
‘You’re going to watch Wilde’s latest play?’ Esther asked.
Percy nodded. ‘For the reason to which you alluded a moment ago.’
‘I did?’
‘In a sense, yes. If we assume that it was Stranmillis who had to make himself scarce, then this suggests he had a closer relationship with Wilde than Ryan. I’m hoping to hear something dropped out casually in conversation that suggests what that link may be.’
‘But you won’t hear anything other than the play itself at the theatre,’ Jack protested, ‘and didn’t I read in the paper that the performances are all sold out?’
‘Who says I’m going in the evening?’ Percy smiled as he claimed the last of the pie.
Jack muttered obscene things about his Inspector uncle as he stared at the pile of paper that had just been delivered to the room in Records in which he was conducting the latest investigation. Stranmillis was obviously going to pose a huge challenge. It had been easy with Ryan, since all his commercial activities were conveniently housed within the one ‘holding’ group, “Ryan Industries”. Stranmillis, on the other hand, had opted to keep his many enterprises separate, and in consequence it was necessary to wade through a dozen or so sets of records filed by companies of which Stranmillis was listed as Chairman of the Board, or Managing Director, or both. Jack wondered idly how all these organisations, with their hundreds, if not thousands, of employees, would react to the news that ‘the boss’ had gone missing. On the other hand, Jack mentally filed as a possible additional line of enquiry, it might be possible to deduce where the man had gone if there was future evidence of ongoing prosperity inside one of his many concerns.
It was possible to track Stranmillis’s trail of inspired genius since he graduated with his B.Sc from university at approximately the same time as Carson and Ryan. First a modest steelworks in a place called Rotherham, a few miles north of Sheffield, then expansion into a quarrying concern in Nottinghamshire that supplied gravel and road “infill” on Government contracts. He’d followed that up with concrete pipe manufacture and laying operations based in Manchester, and designed to service a massive extension in sewer installation by various local authorities in the region that was still ongoing. Every aspect of his entrepreneurship seemed to have benefitted from Government contracts, which meant that he was well connected.
Jack was beginning to expand, in his mind, an initial theory that Stranmillis had been ordered to disappear by someone highly placed in Government circles whom he’d been bribing when his eye lit upon the latest file, and a loud bell rang in his head. In fact, two bells.
The first was the name of the latest business venture — ‘Beeston Salt Pans Ltd’. Jack reminded himself that Ryan Industries had also been recently expanding into salt mining and that it must therefore be not only a profitable line, but also one in which Ryan and Stranmillis might be combining their commercial ambitions. Alternatively, of course, they could be fierce rivals, and this might suggest an alternative explanation for Stranmillis’s disappearance. Then, as he began to read the company prospectus in which his Lordships’ latest enterprise had been touting for investors, it was as if Jack had been hit between the eyes with something heavy and blunt.
It was not so much what the new venture was being formed to exploit, but where. There was, apparently, an existing, but now abandoned, salt extraction site adjacent to an estate in Cheshire that Stranmillis had recently purchased — perhaps the very one that Carson had mentioned that had been the subject of some sort of boundary dispute. It was the intention of this new company to take over an old salt mining complex that had been abandoned ten years previously because of some flooding problem or other, and install new pumping and extraction equipment, in order to exploit what potential shareholders were being assured was still a massive remaining lode of rock salt for which there was a limitless demand worldwide.
Jack’s mouth opened in surprised disbelief as he read a paragraph that described how the site was already well served by a railway branch line that exists between the old mine area and the London and North Western Line between Crewe and Chester, to which the extracted salt product could be hauled ready for onward dispatch to the recently opened Lion Salt Works in Northwich.
This was almost too good to be believable. Stranmillis had access to a railway siding that was linked to the main line between Crewe and Chester. It would be stretching coincidence to breaking point if this was not the place in which he’d arranged to hide his Pullman carriage. It could then be emptied of all the bags that the runaway had brought with him, and either he could be hiding on his Cheshire estate, or he could have travelled anywhere, either by coach or by train. While Uncle Percy was wasting his time being bored to death in the St James Theatre, he — Sergeant Jack Enright — had solved the mystery without assistance.
Particularly not any assistance from a wife who would never have let him forget it if she had been the one to uncover this vital information.
Chapter Ten
‘Very well, sweethearts, let’s do the bit in the first scene where Algie’s telling Jack all about the joys of bunburying,’ instructed the man in the shirtsleeves, sporting a gaudy multi-coloured waistcoat that looked as if someone had just vomited all down the front of it. ‘We’ve got to get the blocking right, since we’ve had complaints from the paying guests that they can’t see Gwendolen’s ankles when she swans in with Lady Bracknell in tow. And Gwenny dear, when you do come in stage left, please arrange to be dressed in your stage costume, and not those ridiculous bloomer things that you’ve got on ce matin.’
The man jumped daintily from the stage like a Spring lamb frolicking in the morning dew, waving what was presumably the script. He turned petulantly when he heard a female voice muttering from behind an aspidistra pot, and yelled back up, ‘Gwenny, either talk directly to me, or keep your delicate little lipsies sealed until it’s your turn. And what exactly is your problem?’
‘My costume,’ replied the actress who was presumabl
y cast as Gwendolen. ‘It’s hanging like a beggar’s rags after a month on stage, and the boys in the peanut gallery will be seeing a lot more than my ankles if it gets any more threadbare. So why do I need to wear it just for a lighting rehearsal?’
‘Because we need to get the tracker spot reorganised,’ the man explained. ‘At present when you make your grand first entrance it’s still focused on Jack’s arse. Did your Mummy not teach you what a needle and thread’s for?’
‘I’m an actress, not a seamstress,’ the young lady complained. ‘And it’s not my fault that you sacked the Wardrobe Mistress.’
‘She was already squiffy at eight every morning,’ the man reminded her, ‘and dear old Chasuble’s dog collar was all but strangling him after she took it in at dress rehearsals. Not to mention the gaping hole in the back of Algie’s frock coat. Very convenient for his boyfriend, no doubt, but not what the customers are paying to see. Now, can we get on?’
‘Not until you tell us where Giles has got to,’ replied the man at centre stage who appeared to be playing one of the leading parts that they were about to rehearse. ‘He should be standing here wasting his time instead of mine — that’s what understudies are for, after all, and it’s only a lighting rehearsal. He’s been gone damned near a month now, and I have a medical appointment.’
‘Sorry, sweetie, but we have higher priorities than your piles.’
Without further ado the man in charge raised his hand to gain everyone’s attention. ‘And go!’ he commanded, and the scene began to play out from what was obviously the agreed starting line. Percy, sitting several rows back in the dimly lit stalls, settled down to be bored to distraction, until something in the dialogue between the two leading male characters brought him back to attention with a snap.