The Case of the Missing Bronte

by Robert Barnard

  The fresh air smelt good, and I hurried down to the gate. But, having a sudden thought, I turned back to look at the notice-board I had seen originally from the road. Close to, I could read the details. There it was. Services Friday night and Sunday morning. Personal Testimony: Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 10 to 12 at 25 Pankhurst Road.

  What a very unpleasant idea. Private confession, without any of the safeguards of the confessional. Unpleasant, and how very dangerous too, with a shepherd of sheep who was mainly interested in their fleeces. I wondered what precisely the Reverend Amos was up to, not merely in connection with the manuscript, but in his normal line of business. I decided to stick around for a bit, and went round the corner where a high brick wall shielded me from view from the church. I lit a cigarette, and heard that high voice with the suggestion of American accent ringing out his Address. I lingered round under the benign sky, but still the Address did not end. I had smoked three cigarettes before some movement was heard. A trickle of people began reluctantly to tear itself away from the preacher’s fascinations. ‘What I like, it’s always that bit different,’ I heard a woman say as she went through the gate. And from the door of the chapel I now heard his voice again.

  ‘A great pleasure, Brother Hebblethwaite . . . Glad you enjoyed it, Sister Nichols . . . Yes, I felt the wind of inspiration blowing through me tonight, indeed I did, Brother Hooper . . . See you on Tuesday, then, Sister Boothroyd. It will do you good, I know it will.’

  And then, when all the congregation had drifted away, cleansed, I heard the voice, in lower tones, say:

  ‘Did you see that big guy at the back, boys? That’s the cop I ran into at Hutton. Think you’ll remember him again? Your mother pointed him out, did she? Both of you be very, very careful of that guy.’

  And the voice of the minister of God faded into the night.

  CHAPTER 11

  DOUBLE FAULT

  You couldn’t quite say that all the world and his wife were going to Leeds for the tennis, but a lot of the North was, and they — and the sun — brightened up things considerably. The ‘wife’ part tended towards hats, floppy or flowery, and the ‘world’ part towards blazers and slacks, around and under paunches. Many of them seemed to know each other, and they lingered in the brick and stonedash streets of the Leeds suburb where the tournament was being held, hailing each other, exchanging small talk, and meeting up with others who puffed along from the point where they had been forced to leave their cars. There were lots of noisy kids, and generally the scene presented a Frith-like, bank-holiday atmosphere. Into which the Scandinavians, had they been there, would hardly have fitted.

  But of course they were not there. Nor was it going to be easy to monitor their arrival. The Sports Centre where the tournament was to be held was, of course, a ‘complex’, and that about summed it up. There were four separate gates, and though I told the policeman on each of them to keep his eyes open for large, fair, foreign-looking men, two of them, possibly together — I was nevertheless not hopeful. For a start, if they had sense they would not come together, and singly they would be a lot less noticeable. Then, they seemed to dress in a standard international fashion, and you had to look closely before you saw without doubt that there was something about them that was not English. Like the blank, almost Mongolian face of one of them. I had tried to describe that to the various bobbies, but I gave up when I realized they all thought I meant mongoloid. And big men there were in plenty, among the spectators. As people drifted past me a daft fragment of conversation floated my way: ‘I do like a man to have a bit of meat on him,’ said a woman to her friend. Most of the men around seemed only too happy to oblige her.

  It would have been easier if I had known what they were there for. Knowing that, I might have been able to guess where they would do it, or how, and make appropriate preparations. To justify my presence there at all I had to assume it had something to do with the manuscript. That certainly seemed a reasonable assumption, in view of their turning up both in Timothy Scott-Windlesham’s office and at James L. Parfitt’s hotel. Not to mention their visitation on Tetterfield, because I felt morally certain that it was the shape of one of them I had briefly glimpsed in the street outside, and quite certain it was they who had done the poor old silly over.

  The tennis must surely have been selected because it was the big event in the current Leeds calendar: that is, whatever was to be done, had to be done where there were thousands of people milling around, to give cover. It seemed to me likely that this was done on the orders of James L. Parfitt, or more specifically on those of Mr Secretary Waddington. The one who had made the phone call had been given the rounds of the kitchen for trying to see him at his hotel, because the gilt-edged boys were dead scared lest their connection with the manuscript be traced. In future, nothing but phone calls, and above all a maximum of obfuscation of the scent. So the next step had to be undertaken in a place guaranteed to cause maximum confusion — for fear that the Vikings were being followed.

  But what was the next step?

  One thing I was willing to bet: they had the manuscript. I was made the more certain of this by something I’d heard that morning. Dr Tetterfield had been released, at his insistence, from the hospital, and a Bradford policeman had gone along to drive him home, and to make a last attempt to frighten him out of his complacent silence. But the complacent silence had been undented, and had been mingled — the chap said — with a sort of excited anticipation. After he had delivered him home, and had swapped heavy incivilities with his mountainous housekeeper, he had lingered in the doorway, warned by some sixth sense. A few moments later he had heard a despairing wail, and the voice of Tetterfield calling for his housekeeper. This made it pretty clear: after he had passed out under treatment, the Vikings had found what they were after, and had stolen it.

  And now, presumably, they were passing it on. But to whom? Certainly neither Parfitt nor Waddington would take the risk. They were the clean-hand boys, and likely to remain so, certainly for as long as they were in this country. One possibility was that they had decided that the Nordic duo had outlived their usefulness, and that the prize was to be handed on to another contact — one that would take it out of the country, perhaps. Take it over to the States, where in a few years it would surface, and no one would know for sure whether it was that dubious manuscript, which few had seen, which had been mentioned in connection with a certain murderous attack in a Yorkshire village . . .

  That seemed a possibility, but there were other possibilities as well. There might be further processes the gilt-edged boys wanted gone through before they committed themselves to the ultimate risk of smuggling it into the US. They could, for example, want it verified by an expert. Risky. But there were plenty of crooked experts around. Or they could want to get a typescript made of it.

  And then I saw him. The taller, Nordic-looking one. I was in the biggest open space in the Sports Centre, behind the courts, with gates away to my right and to my left. The crowds were milling, because the first matches were about to start, and some were going to one court, some to another. And there among them was the regular-featured, clear-eyed, slightly anonymous-looking man I was after, advancing towards me. I withdrew to the shadow presented by a sweets and ice-cream stall, and watched.

  He was alone. He pretended for a bit to be going with one of the streams towards Court One, but he went slowly, and I could see his eyes were darting around, searching for something, someone. Who? Me? His menacing-looking chum? Surely not — he was looking, I now realized, down. And looking, though he was being very canny about it, mainly at the women. Being very unobtrusive about it, as I say, but in my job you get to acquire a certain expertise in people’s aims and intentions. Like you know the chap sauntering through Soho, looking everywhere, seeming to be interested in everyone and everything, is really only interested in one thing, and if you follow him you can easily find out what. Well, this chap was interested in a woman — perhaps someone he knew, perhaps someone he had a
description of. Coming towards the entrance to Court One, he seemed to be afflicted by a change of mind: he stopped, turned, and started mingling with the crowd going towards the other courts. He would pass close to the sweets stall. I sank further into the shadow and looked about me.

  You certainly saw all sorts there. I’d always been a bit prejudiced about tennis — thought it a snooty sport, all strawberries and cream and the Duchess of Kent. And, to be sure, there was no lack of snoots around. I saw two of the people who had been fawning on the Parfitts in the hotel suite in Bradford: they were done up to the nines, and hail-fellowing it all over the show. I kept my eyes on them all right. But there were also coppers I’d met at the Leeds Police HQ — out with their wives and families, and presumably not on plain-clothes duty. There was a waitress who’d brought my breakfast that morning, and a member of Amos Macklehose’s congregation (who presumably had wrestled with her spirit and decided that tennis too could be regarded as one of the gifts of God). So with the kids racing about the place and making a din, and the candy-floss and ice-cream being licked, the open areas round the courts had a real bank-holiday feel to them — much more so, I’d guess, than you’d find at Wimbledon.

  The blond man strolled by me, deceptively casual, and I slipped behind the stall till he’d gone by. When I reemerged he was still going in the same direction, towards Court Four, but as I watched he almost imperceptibly increased his speed. I darted from cover and went after him. He began edging out of the stream of spectators, and suddenly I saw coming from the other direction, menacing and unfestive in that crowd, his friend and ally. Almost without a glance at each other they met up, and — still without a sign — changed course and started towards the nearest exit.

  I made a frantic gesture to one of the constables I’d talked to earlier, a sign over the heads of the crowd. I pointed towards the duo, and as he edged over towards the exit I came in behind them to shut off their retreat. They saw the constable, sensed something was up, and the blond, Nordic one looked behind him. He began to swerve aside, but then he seemed to have second thoughts: weight for weight he and his pal matched me and the constable. But with a hostile crowd they would have no chance. He put his hand on the arm of the other, and they continued walking until they came to a halt at the exit, their course stopped by a blank wall of constabular chest.

  ‘Excuse me, sir — ’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There’s a gentleman here would like a word with you — a gentleman from Scotland Yard.’

  The tall one turned, and looked at me — blond, neutral.

  ‘Yes?’

  His accent was neutral too. Like a lot of Scandinavians he could pass for an Englishman as long as he kept to monosyllables.

  ‘I want to talk to you both,’ I said, wasting no words. ‘Is there an office?’ I asked the constable.

  ‘We’ve got a room in the administration building,’ he said, nodding to the block behind us. ‘I expect you could use that.’

  ‘That’ll do. Come along with us.’

  ‘Is this necessary?’ said the taller one, the spokesman. ‘We are here for the tennis.’

  ‘Are you? Odd you should have been making for the exit before the first game has begun, isn’t it?’

  He blinked. Fifteen-love to Perry Trethowan, I thought. We hove in on either side, and the four of us made our way silently to the administrative block. Once there I let the constable go, and we sat on either side of a bare deal table, looking each other up and down. The spokesman continued to look bland, totally cool, but the other seemed tense with bottled-up rage and a vindictive, indiscriminate violence.

  ‘Your names?’

  The big blond one paused, thought, and seemed to decide it would be foolish to go into the Norwegian version of the Jones and Brown routine.

  ‘Rolf Tingvold. And this is Knut — ’ and then something quite unpronounceable.

  ‘Do you have your passports?’

  Pause again, then both of them took them from their pockets. Little red passports, Norwegian, the information inside typed. Rolf Tingvold, with an address in Hammerfest, North Norway. Knut Ratikainen, with an address in Vadso. Several entry stamps indicating lengthy stays in the United States. Profession: seamen. They did not seem to have followed their profession for some time, but in the current state of the shipping business that was not unusual. I turned to the threatening, blank-faced one.

  ‘Ratikainen — that’s not a Norwegian name, is it?’ I said to him. ‘Are you a lapsed Lapp, or something?’

  He glowered ahead, silent. It wasn’t much of a joke, but he could have made the effort.

  ‘It is a Finnish name,’ said his friend. ‘There is big community of Finnish descent in North Norway. He is born Norwegian.’

  ‘I see. What are you doing in this country?’

  ‘On holidays. Between jobs. We are seamen.’

  ‘So I gather. And is Leeds the sort of place Norwegian seamen generally come to for a holiday?’

  Tingvold remained neutral, unsmiling. ‘Why not? We like to see the world.’

  ‘Ah yes. And today?’

  ‘We came to see the tennis.’

  ‘Yet you were leaving before it even started.’

  Pause.

  ‘It was something to do. Before the pubs opened. But we change our minds, see? Because we was not specially interested. Tennis isn’t so popular in Norway.’

  ‘Difficult to play on skis, I suppose. So, having paid five pounds each, you leave without seeing a game.’

  ‘No law against that, is there? We pay to come in, we leave when we want to. I tell you, we’re not that interested.’

  ‘Come off it,’ I said, hotting up the pace. ‘I saw you. You didn’t decide to leave. You met up, and without a word you went to the exit. It was a prearranged plan. You’d done what you came here to do, hadn’t you?’

  ‘We decide to go. So who needs words? We know each other well, we don’t have to speak.’

  ‘Touching. I don’t believe a word of it. What’s your connection with James L. Parfitt?’

  ‘Who? Who’s he? I never heard of him.’

  ‘I doubt that. What about Mr Waddington?’

  ‘I don’t know nobody with that name.’

  ‘I saw you in Bradford coming out of their hotel.’

  ‘So what? We go places to drink. Is that illegal?’

  ‘I heard you mention the name Waddington in a pub there.’

  ‘Ha. You understand Norwegian? You make a mistake, that’s all.’

  ‘I also saw you at Milltown, coming out of the room of Timothy Scott-Windlesham.’

  ‘Where is Milltown? We never been there in our lives.’

  ‘Stand up. I want to search you.’

  That pause again — insolent, reflective, an assertion of latent power. From the Finn, sitting there, his silver fair hair glinting under the light from the ceiling, it was especially fearsome. But then they stood up. I went over them thoroughly. Wallets, pens, cigarettes — not a thing of interest. Ratikainen, as I searched him, seemed barely able to suppress a desire to tangle with me. His eyes thinned, his blank, asiatic face took on a look of infinite menace. His silence, his compliance, implied a storing up for the future.

  I had an idea.

  ‘Take your jackets off.’

  They looked at me, with the usual powerful, threatening silence. Then they stripped off their jackets and threw them contemptuously over the table. They sat down again on their chairs, folding their arms, looking straight ahead of them.

  I took up Ratikainen’s jacket. It was a cheapish American job, stretched by his bulk, beginning to look tatty. I inspected the pockets and the linings. Nothing. Then I took up Rolf Tingvold’s. Immediately I struck gold. Or at least solid silver. On the inside lining there was a long zip, carefully hand-sewn, with a sailor’s skill. It ran almost from shoulder to waist. It opened to reveal a large, lined pocket, more than large enough to contain, say, a bulky foolscap envelope. It was empty.

  ‘
Unusual,’ I said.

  ‘Not so unusual. We are seamen. Is useful.’

  ‘Funny I’ve never seen one before. And what was in it?’

  ‘Nothing. We are in a hotel. All our stuff is in our room. We don’t need to carry anything.’

  ‘Oh no? Not a large envelope, for example? Containing perhaps a manuscript?’

  ‘What is that, please? Manuscript.’

  ‘Paper. With writing on it.’

  ‘I don’t write much.’

  ‘You know perfectly well what I’m referring to. I’m referring to the manuscript you stole from Dr Tetterfield. Let me tell you what I think happened. You made an appointment with somebody, to meet them at the tennis. You wanted to hand on the manuscript in some crowded place, rather than going to their home, where you might be followed. You had a description of him or her, and perhaps a sign between you to ensure you got it right. And when you saw whoever it was, you passed the manuscript over, and immediately tried to get out. I, like a fool, didn’t take you when I first saw you, when you still had the manuscript.’

  ‘Is all a fairy tale.’

  ‘And you brought little endearing here along with you, to back you up if there was any rough stuff.’

  ‘There wasn’t no rough stuff. We didn’t make no trouble.’

  ‘Not with two policemen. If it had been Mr Scott-Windlesham or Dr Tetterfield — that would have been a different matter.’

  ‘Who are these people with the terrible names? We never heard of them.’

  ‘Well, perhaps we’d better see about that.’

  I collected a constable and a police car, piled them in, and we drove from Leeds to Bradford in silence. Or near silence, for they swapped a few muttered sentences in Norwegian. I thought they could have been contemplating making a break for it at traffic lights, so I kept my eyes on them all the way, but they brazened it out — sitting there in the back, solid, silent, apparently quite confident. And how right they were to be that.

  At Bradford we drove directly to Dr Tetterfield’s house. It was Saturday, but his housekeeper was on duty. The sight of her on one side of the door, guarding, and us four heavies on the other side, demanding admittance, was full of comic possibilities, but I wasn’t in the mood for quiet humour, and the Scandinavian heavies looked as if their sense of humour had been deep-frozen at birth. After the usual wait we were led up once more to Tetterfield’s study. He was sitting convalescent in his armchair, a pathetic sight, his face and hands dotted over with sticking plaster, a great blue bruise over his right eye. At the sight of the Finn he visibly flinched.