"Mebbe," said the boy with that natural skepticism which marks the true Luton supporter. "Tell you next April."
Joe's musically attuned ear told him the dining-room duet was reaching its climax. It didn't sound as if Mrs. Tremayne was going to return in a better temper than when she left, which was an excellent reason to be on his way. He'd got all he was going to get here, though as usual he'd no idea whether it was worth the effort.
"Mebbe see you at the ground sometime, Liam," he said. "Say goodbye to your mum for me."
He made his way out, glancing at his watch. Still a couple of hours before he needed to think about getting to the airport. His visit to Lock-keeper's Lane had proved more productive than he'd anticipated, but he refused to let himself get carried away, mainly because his limited imaginative powers couldn't picture any destination he might be carried away to.
But he did know where it was worth looking for a silver Audi 8 Quattro.
He paused at the mini-roundabout at the top end of Lock-keeper's Lane to work out the best route to the Royal Hoo.
Straight across was going to be quickest, he decided.
And it was little surprise to discover after he'd negotiated the roundabout that he was driving along Plun- kett Avenue.
18
A Patch of Oil
It occurred to Joe as he was parking his car that on this occasion he didn't have the protective cover of an invitation from the YFG.
On the other hand, no one here was going to know that, he told himself, and in any case he wanted to keep a low profile.
He checked his gear. He was dressed for his Spanish trip. If it had been a holiday he would definitely have traveled in the parrot shorts, but as it was business he'd opted for canary yellow chinos, green T-shirt and blue deck shoes. Nothing there to cause offense in a place where plus-fours and tartan trews were regarded as sharp gear.
It was still early, but golfers must like an early start for there was already an impressive array of high-priced metal on display in the car park, including two silver Audi 8's.
The first he looked at was the 3-liter diesel model.
"Some poor sod on the bread-line," mused Joe, making for the other.
This was the big boy, the Quattro 6. He strolled round as if admiring the lines. No sign of Waring's belongings inside. Must be still in the boot. He noticed that the tire had picked up some mud which was quite a feat round Luton during the heatwave. Except of course he was in Royal Hoo mini-climate land where you could probably summon the steward and order mud.
"Mr. Sixsmith."
He looked up to see Chip Harvey approaching carrying what looked like a portable mummy case.
The young man didn't look happy to see him. It was understandable. Last time they'd met here, he'd been the YFG's guest and a well-heeled prospective member. After last night he was just old Joe, the snoop.
He said, "Hi, Chip. How're you doing? Have a good time last night?"
"OK," grunted Chip, which didn't come across as the modest disclaimer of a guy who had raved it up round the clubs before being taken to the bosom and wherever else he fancied of the gorgeous Eloise. Maybe things hadn't panned out.
He said, "Just admiring the Audi. Nice wheels."
"OK if you like that sort of thing," said Chip with the disdain of youth to whom Vorsprung durch Technik means dull in any language.
Then to Joe's surprise he reached down and started to unlock the boot.
"Hey, this isn't your machine, is it?"
"Don't be silly," said Chip as the lid slowly rose allowing Joe to see that he'd got another guess completely wrong. The boot was empty except for a piece of dark blue carpeting of a quality Joe couldn't afford for his living room. Chip's sharp young eyes spotted an imperfection that Joe had missed. He reached in and touched the carpet with his index finger. He raised it to reveal the tip was oily. Frowning, he took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his finger and then rubbed the linen square vigorously over the offending piece of carpet. It took a lot of rubbing till he was satisfied, by which time his handkerchief was ruined. "You do car-valeting too?" inquired Joe. "These things cost too much to get them dirty," said Chip, laying the mummy case gently inside. It was made of a rich black leather with a zipper and some strap buckles that looked like they could be real old gold. "Just what is that thing?" asked Joe. "It's a travel case," said Chip. "You put your golf bag and clubs in it so they don't get knocked around when you're flying abroad." "Shoot! You mean it's going to go in the plane's hold and you're worried about a bit of oil?" "I'm not worried, but Mr. Rowe might be." "That would be Colin Rowe?" "That's right. It's just been delivered and he asked me to put it in his car. He plays abroad a lot so he needs his clubs well protected." "What happened to his last one?" "Got ripped up coming back from Portugal the other week." "There you go! Way those handlers throw things around, he'd be better off using a couple of bin-liners. I mean, this thing looks more pricey than most of what I take on holiday!" "You'd be amazed. Special order, we don't keep these babies in stock. But Mr. Rowe wanted an exact replacement. Insurance paying, why not?" "Suppose. Mr. Rowe, is he one of the good guys or one of those who talk like you're not there?" He'd moved off the acceptable ground of talking about how rich and important the Hoo members were. Chip slammed the lid down, and turned to face Joe. "Mr. Sixsmith-" "Joe-" "Mr. Sixsmith. I really don't want to talk to you about what goes on at the club." "No? What's happened since last night?" "I didn't want to talk to you last night either, but at least we were in a pub. Here, well, this is where I work…" "And this is where you're going to get the money to put you on this tour thing, right?" "That's right. The members are being very generous, giving me this chance to show what I can do…" "With Chris Porphyry leading the way, wasn't that what you said?" "Yes, maybe. But there are plenty of others and I need to think about them too. If you're going to make it to the top in this business, you've really got to put your game first." Joe's areas of expertise were not all that extensive, ranging from the workings of the internal combustion engine to the history of Luton FC with not a great deal in between, but one thing he had learned by bitter experience was you had to be very careful what you said to a woman, 'specially one who was willing to give Jurassic George his marching orders when his training schedule got in the way of her raving schedule. He'd guessed earlier things hadn't gone too well for Chip last night. Now he thought he knew why.
"Didn't say this to Eloise, did you?" he asked.
"You been talking to her?" said Chip suspiciously.
"No need. But I'd guess you went on about how pissed you were at her inviting me along to the Hole. And she said she didn't take kindly to being told what she could and couldn't do, and what was your beef? And then you told her about the support package and you probably rattled on about your career in golf being the most important thing in your life, and you didn't want it messed up. And she said in that case better you headed off home and got your head down before nine o'clock so you could be sure of waking at the crack to get out and practice."
"You have been talking to her!" declared Chip indignantly. "I don't suppose she said she was sorry?"
"As in, sorry I was wrong?" said Joe. "Chip, I don't know much about handling women, but two things I do know. One is, never tell them anything is more important than the way you feel about them. The other is, don't matter they're so much in the wrong they could go to jail for it, there's always part of them that knows they're absolutely in the right."
"Well, thanks for that good advice," said Chip, moving away. "But me and Eloise are history now, so it doesn't make much difference."
"Believe me, you're well out of it, Chip," said Joe, recalling with a shudder Jurassic's subtle way with a rival.
He'd fallen into step with Chip, if taking one and a half steps to the youngster's one could so be termed. He got a distinct impression the boy was trying to shake him off.
Breathing hard, he said, "When you were talking to Mr. Rowe just now, he say anything about your career?"
"Well, yes, he did," admitted Chip. "He said there'd been a lot of interest in the support package and, all being well, as long as I didn't blot my copy-book and knew who my real friends were, I had a bright future."
Yes, thought Joe. And then he tossed you the key to his super-luxe wheels and told you to run along and put his new highly expensive travel case in the boot. It's called putting you in your place.
Joe had experienced plenty of being put in his place, which he paid little heed to on the grounds that he found his place so very much to his liking that he had no notion of trying to get out of it. Also it was often very helpful to a PI for folk to be so certain you were in your place they didn't watch you as close as they should have done.
But to a young man with ambitions, being sent off to put the bag in the Audi was like saying, this is where you are and that's where you'd like to be, so keep your nose clean else you'll never take even the first step.
Talking of steps, the boy's had now lengthened so much he was several yards ahead. The distance didn't stop Colin Rowe glowering at him as he came out of the pro's shop and spotted the approaching procession.
Chip reached him and said in a loud voice, "Case is in your car, Mr. Rowe. Here are your keys."
"Thanks, Chip," said Rowe.
The youngster went into the shop. Joe approached, trying to give the impression of a man who just happened to be walking in that direction.
Rowe, now smiling broadly, said, "Joe, nice to see you again. Taking another look at us, are you? Wise man. Second impressions are always best, that's what we say in the estate business."
"Meeting Chris for coffee," said Joe, following his practice of sticking to a simple lie. "Thought I'd get here early and take a stroll around, if that's OK?"
"Of course it is. Take a good look. You've certainly given yourself plenty of time. I like a man who's thorough. Did Chris show you our changing rooms? Just over here."
He led the way to the main building through a door marked Members Only.
Joe's experience of changing rooms was limited to what was on offer in the world of Sunday-morning football, which at the luxury end amounted to little more than a hut with wooden benches, four-inch nails driven into the wall to act as coat-pegs, and a couple of luke-warm showers whose thin trickle somehow managed to spread more water over the muddy floor than over your muddy body.
This was something else. The benches were upholstered in dark green leather, the walls were lined with richly glowing mahogany lockers each bearing a gilded name in cursive script, while the floor was covered with a carpet even more expensive than the one in the Audi's boot, and the only mud in sight was that carried in on Rowe's hand-made shoes.
"Showers through there," said Rowe, pointing.
Joe advanced through a small antechamber lined with shelves bearing bars of soap, bottles of shower gel and hair shampoo, and gleaming alps of snow-white bath sheets. Beyond this there must have been a dozen or more cubicles, each as spacious as his own bathroom back on Rasselas.
He said, "Hey, how do I get the tile concession?"
Rowe laughed and said, "That your line of business then, Joe, construction?"
"Sometimes," said Joe. "More facilitating, know what I mean?"
"Yes, I see," said Rowe, nodding vigorously, presumably to indicate he did know what Joe meant, which was good as Joe himself didn't have the faintest idea, but he'd really liked the word when he came across it in his crossword.
Rowe had got most of his kit off by now. A thing Joe had noticed in his admittedly limited dealings with the upper classes was the higher you got, the less it bothered them flashing their flesh. Himself, he'd been brought up so proper by Aunt Mirabelle that he could have changed out of overalls into evening suit under a tea towel without bringing a blush to a maiden cheek.
Feeling rather uncomfortable as Rowe dropped his boxers and started to cram his pretty hefty parts into an athletic support, Joe said, "Leave you to it, then."
"Sure. Hope to catch you later. And hey! We haven't forgotten you promised to join us for a round some time."
In your dreams, thought Joe as he made his escape.
And in my nightmares!
19
Go with the Garbage
To Joe Sixsmith, the detective process was more like an act of creative imagination than a rational process, though of course if you'd suggested this to him in a pub, he'd have advised you went home and drank a couple of liters of water and hoped you'd wake up feeling better in the morning.
Someone, probably Butcher, had once told him he had something called negative capability, which meant he didn't let being surrounded by stuff in a case that made no sense bother him.
Joe had laughed at her joke. Why should he let anything bother him when, like a good pilgrim, he had his own Good Book, Endo Venera's Not So Private Eye? Often when the way forward seemed a bit uncertain, one of Endo's elegantly phrased maxims would float into his mind.
It would be nice, opined Endo, if investigation was all high life and high-balls, but sometimes you gotta go with the garbage.
At the moment, iced coffee on the terrace (the Hoo equivalent of high life and high-balls) seemed very attractive, but that would mean maybe running up against the other two corners of the Bermuda Triangle. Just because he was beginning to feel some uneasiness about Colin Rowe didn't mean they were necessarily tarred with the same brush, but at the very least they might start pressing him again to play a few holes with them. Also Butcher had implied Arthur Surtees was a guy to be scared of, and when a lawyer as scary as Butcher told you that about another lawyer, only a fool didn't pay heed.
So when Joe came out of the locker room, instead of heading left round the front of the clubhouse he made his way right round the rear, toward the service area behind the kitchen where the garbage was.
Though Endo Venera gave many graphic and often unsavory examples of significant finds he'd made among garbage, Joe didn't really have it in mind to start rifling through the rubbish. Not that it would have been all that easy anyway. Normally even behind the most elegant of restaurants, the waste area is unhygienic and squalid. Not at the Royal Hoo. Here there were no loosely tied black plastic bags, easy for PI's and vermin to penetrate, but a neat line of elegant green bins with hinged lids sufficiently tight fitting to contain all but the slightest whiff of decay, even in this hot weather.
Also there was a witness, a figure lounging against the wall alongside the kitchen doorway, a cigarette between his lips.
Joe recognized him as the club steward.
"Morning, Bert," he called as he drew near.
The man straightened up like a sentry caught lolling against his box and the cigarette vanished as if by magic. But when he realized who it was addressing him, he relaxed once more and the half-smoked fag emerged from behind his back.
This told Joe something he was quite glad of. Whoever else he might be fooling at the Hoo, the steward had got him sussed.
"Morning, Mr. Sixsmith," said the man politely, which told Joe a little more. Bert might know he was just an employee like himself, but being the YFG's employee still got you a bit of respect.
"Name's Joe," he said, offering his hand. "I'm a private investigator."
"Yeah, I know. Bert Symonds."
They shook hands.
"You knew all the time?" said Joe, curious.
"Wondered when I first saw you. I thought, hasn't Mr. Porphyry got enough bother on his hands without…"
He hesitated and Joe helped him out by saying, "Without putting up someone like me for membership."
"That's it. Don't take it personal. I mean, they're so bloody choosy here, you wouldn't believe. Even Sir Monty Wright got blackballed."
"Well, I was way ahead of the field there," said Joe, who had quickly worked out this was probably a good guy to have on your side. Also he'd learned early to differentiate between the casual thoughtless racism you met at all levels of English society and the bred-in-the-bone KKK variety. A qu
iet word often sorted out the former while the latter was usually beyond the reach of anything this side of divine revelation.
Bert said, "Anyway, the name rang a bell. You played footie in the same works team as my cousin, Alf, right? I remembered him talking about this mate who set up as a gumshoe when they all got made redundant."
"Alfie Symonds? Hey, man, how's he doing?"
"Moved down to Romford, got a new job there. I gave him a call to check you out. Description fitted and Alfie says you're all right. He sends his regards."
"Give him mine. So, Bert, you enjoy working here?"
He saw the man's expression shadow into caution and he didn't wait for an answer but plunged straight on, "Look, what I'm doing here is this. Mr. Porphyry's in a spot of trouble-well, I don't expect I need to tell you anything about that."
The man nodded.
"OK. So it looks like he's been cheating, only he says he wasn't, so he asked me to help him find out what's really going on. That's it. I'm working for Mr. Porphyry and you work for the club, and I don't want to get anyone into bother. So if you'd rather I didn't ask you any questions, just say so, and I'll be on my way."
Bert took a long drag at his cigarette then said, "You ask, and if I don't want to answer, I won't."
"Fair enough," said Joe, wondering, What the hell is there I can ask this guy? It felt like a golden opportunity, but the trouble with golden opportunities was that, unless you got decent notice, they were often easier to let slip than to grasp.
He said, "You think he cheated?"
Bert said, "They all want to win so badly, I'd not trust any of them not to bend the rules a bit."
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