But she did tell him where Uncle Alf was to be found. Alfie Tandy was no blood relation. Yet he had stayed in touch with her since The Stalagmite days. On the first Friday evening of every month, he took her to a local called The Shipwright’s Arms, where he bought her a single glass of Guinness and preached to her about the fecklessness of her way of life. Sometimes she failed—or forgot—to turn up. But Uncle Alf’s loyalty went on unperturbed: she was on his duty roster. And he had looked her up since his return from Peak Low.
Alf Tandy proved to be a surprising man. There were facets of his character over which Kenworthy pondered on his long journey back to the North-West. Alf Tandy, knowing that there must be a pack on his heels, was cutting his losses and living his life half a day at a time. He was expecting to be picked up—in fact waiting to be picked up—and he assumed that Kenworthy had come for just that purpose. He had heard of Kenworthy, as had any Londoner of his age and provenance. He did not believe that Kenworthy had retired—or that any copper ever truly did. He professed a great regard for Kenworthy’s cleverness and record, and seemed in a quiet way flattered that it was Kenworthy that they had sent to come and get him.
He was resigned to the probability of losing his liberty in his old age, and was unobtrusively enjoying what might well be his last holiday. He had gone to Ramsgate, where he was staying in what must have been one of the least desirable boarding-houses in the town, in a terraced back-street lost in the brick huddle that is known as the Plains of Waterloo, where he was living out of his banjo-case. Here, he told Kenworthy, he had stayed before the war. For one week in every year of his childhood, his parents had brought him here. Kenworthy found him in a public house called The Prussian Eagle, where he was sipping at a milk stout and studying the Stop Press of the day’s race meetings. He was wearing a pair of grey flannel trousers, with turn-ups, clearly a legacy of his early manhood. He had on a whitish shirt with an open-neck collar and a dark blue blazer, with a pocket badge worked in the insignia of the Pioneer Corps. His turn-out was completed by a very old, yellowing straw panama, despite the fact that there had been no sun since he had come here and none forecast.
He did not cede the pass to Kenworthy at once. There was a ritual of prevarication in self-defence that had to be worked through first for honour’s sake. Kenworthy had work to do, softening him up, showing him that they shared the same attitudes to men and the world, trying to rouse Tandy’s sense of humour—in vain, for he had none. But this had always been Kenworthy’s strength as an interrogator. He could appear to be on his subject’s side. He put Alf Tandy and himself on a common and sympathetic plane, created the illusion of a unified and, unfortunately for mankind, all too rare viewpoint.
So Alfie Tandy went on to tell Kenworthy how things had once been, how he had seen the world developing, and what future he saw for society. And there were moments when there was a catch in Alfie’s throat, when his eyes blinked wetly. They went together to a shellfish stall, where Kenworthy had a plate of whelks, and Tandy one of mussels.
‘I shan’t half suffer for this,’ Tandy said. ‘I always do when I eat these bloody things.’
‘You were a bit of a mug, you know,’ Kenworthy said, ‘going for Larner with spikes in the road. I’d not been on the ground half an hour before I knew it had to be you.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr Kenworthy. I don’t know anything about any spikes in the road.’
‘Shall I tell you how I knew it was you, Alfie? It stood out a mile. Because nobody else would have wasted his time like that. Everybody else, from Lord Furnival down to the greenest Tippexologist, knew that Larner was off the road for the duration—or they thought he was. But not you, at your London end. You came steaming up the old Midland Line with a working selection of scrap metal hidden among the smalls in your banjo-case. It didn’t take you long to find out your mistake—just as soon as you talked to Jimmy Lindop. Then you suddenly saw your chance, that Saturday night.’
It was the sort of reasoning that deeply impressed Alfie Tandy. Kenworthy had always found that if you could show, even by guesswork, one piece of information that your man had not thought you could possibly have, you were three-quarters there.
Tandy raised doggy eyes into Kenworthy’s. Oh, he was a clever bugger, this one was. Always had been.
‘That’s not how it was, Mr Kenworthy. I’ll admit that that’s how it nearly happened. But it was not meant to be. That’s the only way I can look at it.’
Not meant to be—Like many of his kind, Tandy was not a religious man in the orthodox sense, but there was a strong seam of vestigial belief, sentimental at bottom, that came readily to the surface in any crisis.
‘You’d better take me through it a step at a time, Alfie,’ Kenworthy said.
‘I’ll do that, Mr Kenworthy.’
Chapter Eighteen
On the train from London to Manchester, Kenworthy read in the early evening edition that there was trouble up at t’mill at Peak Low: a lightning strike of technicians. He did not think that Lindop was actually a shop-steward, but he was likely to have the shop-stewards on tight strings.
Kenworthy went straight up to the Hall, since there would be invidious speculation in high quarters if he went first to see Gleed. Freddy Kershaw was waiting for him in the entrance hall, on one of the settees set at a low table within call of the receptionist’s desk. At the sight of Kenworthy, Kershaw nodded goodbye to her, as if they had been enjoying the last half-hour. Then he began to edge Kenworthy out of her earshot, with an almost dramatic insistence on secrecy.
‘I’ve got it, sir—I know how the word got round about Larner’s car.’
‘Oh yes? Good man.’
‘The garage rang, sir. The call was taken at this switchboard. The girl put it through to Cantrell, and within two minutes he was in conference with Furnival. Then they called Dyer in.’
‘But how could the word have got through to Miss Mommsen—and perhaps even Tandy?’
‘I’m still working on that, sir. I can only think it must have been the blonde, sir, at the desk. It wouldn’t be one of the top lot, would it?’
‘Wouldn’t it?’
There seemed something vacant about Kenworthy, as if he no longer attached much importance to the matter of Larner’s car. He turned towards the foot of the stairs.
‘Have you offered comfort and succour to Miss Culver?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Kenworthy went up the stairs, passed Dyer coming down, and saw an even deeper melancholy than usual in the impresario’s face. Something was fermenting inside Dyer, and the venom was distilling into his eyes. It was more than a sulking bout. It was a deep-reaching sickness at the unpalatability of life. He passed close to Kenworthy, but turned his face the other way: a puerile gesture, but he looked as if he were beyond tolerating human society.
Kenworthy tapped on the door of Furnival’s sitting-room, which was used as a common room for the inner cabinet of the Passion. His Lordship and Cantrell were alone there. Cantrell was on his feet, like a man on a club hearth, and it was evident that the conversation that Kenworthy was interrupting had been, if not heated, energetic and discordant.
‘You went a bit far, there, Charles—not that I give two hoots about it. As soon as the legal bods have got the new clauses organized, there’s no call for Dyer to stay here. I shall tell him to bobby off. Oh, hullo, Kenworthy. I was beginning to think you had deserted us.’
He was superficially jocular, but there was more than a hint that henceforward Kenworthy’s place, unless he wanted to give up the assignment, was in Peak Low.
‘Sorry, sir—but I think I’ve sorted the main thing out. Or, at least, I’ve broken its back.’
‘Oh—you mean the mere murder of a pop star? We’re in danger of forgetting about that, Charles and I.’
‘You mean labour troubles?’
‘Labour? That’s a mere pretext. We have a strike on our hands because Szolnok ticked off a lighting man, whereas his w
rit runs only to sound. Lindop thinks he’s got us over a barrel.’
Kenworthy risked provocation.
‘He has, hasn’t he?’
‘Not by industrial action. The money I pay is too good for that. They’ll be back at their switchboards and battens tomorrow. Lindop’s real object was to demonstrate what could be done. What worries me is his hold on those tapes. He has all the good ones—and God knows how many bad ones. And some of them are bad. There are some that go back to the Stalag—and Larner’s language on them is worse than Szolnok’s and Hajek’s. We’ve every right to burgle his stores, they being my stores, but even if we did that, there’s no telling what he’s got stashed away elsewhere.’
‘Sack him. Get an injunction,’ Cantrell said, impatient that Furnival should be considering any other solution.
‘And wait for him to tell the great waiting world all that’s happening? Let the media and the wholesalers of pirate cassettes know? Be your age, Charles. There must be some way of handling him. And I still say I couldn’t have a better man at the console. I don’t propose to let him off the hook now, foot-loose and antagonized.’
‘I know what I’d do.’
‘So do I, Cantrell. And you’d have a deserted theatre up in these here hills that had never raised its curtain to an audience. Kenworthy, I wish we’d had you here today. I hope you’re not thinking of swanning off again tomorrow? Never mind about who killed Larner. Leave that to Gleed.’
‘I’ll be here, I don’t need to make any more outside inquiries.’
‘Then give your mind to Lindop. I called you in for your ingenuity, and I need that ingenuity now. By whatever means, I want all Lindop’s master-tapes in my own safe-keeping. And I want anything that might harm the show to be bulk-erased and better bulk-erased. And I’m sorry, I’m forgetting myself. We live in troublesome times. What will you drink? I apologize for being so ungracious.’
Kenworthy had no wish to do his talking in front of Cantrell and he indicated this by a flicker of his eyes. Furnival made no ceremony about asking the Colonel to leave them.
‘Two bad mistakes I made, Kenworthy. I shouldn’t have taken on Lindop, good as he is. Dyer did warn me about him. But I suppose it was one of those things. I wasn’t having Dyer calling all the damned tunes. And I shouldn’t have appointed Cantrell. The reason was, I wanted someone who can be aggressive in crises. I can be tough when I have to be. But I’ll be frank with you: it suits my book to play the easy-going liberal and pay someone else to make himself unpopular. I didn’t know then that he hates the guts of the entertainment world. He’s just upset Dyer, leading off quite unnecessarily about some of Larner’s peccadilloes—as if Dyer needed to be reminded of them. It isn’t that I have any sympathy with Dyer. It was in such bad taste—and so childish.’
For a few seconds Furnival put on his good taste act—as if nothing else in the world mattered to him but fastidious behaviour. Kenworthy stretched out his legs luxuriously.
‘Cantrell’s trouble is personal,’ Furnival said. ‘A few years ago his daughter, who was eighteen at the time, got involved to some tune with some group or other—nothing to do with anything in Larner’s life, or Dyer’s. Drug scene. Rescued and persuaded to dry out. Did dry out. Then got hooked again. It’s not a new story. And it’s surprising how often it happens to people that you and I know, people of standing. Well, there’s nothing to be surprised at in that, if you come to think about it. If Cantrell’s as reactionary at home as he is about this place, then he might as well be running a forcing-house for drop-outs. All of which ought to have come out in my inquiries before I took the man on. I ought to have called on you to do my positive vetting for me.’
‘It’s funny,’ Kenworthy said. ‘Not so very long ago, I was listening to a similar story. On a very different plane, though.’
‘Yes—tell me what you’ve found out.’
‘I met a man who candidly admits that he came to Peak Low with the intention of killing Wayne Larner.’
‘You mean the little fellow who keeps his spare socks in a musical instrument case? We all thought he’d done it.’
‘His scheme didn’t work. Larner was too good a driver. But he could tell us who Larner’s killer was. He was almost a witness.’
‘You’ve passed this good news on to Gleed, of course?’
‘He won’t find it good news—only indifferent. Tandy won’t talk. I got to know him remarkably well in a very short time. He has a sentimental inhibition about grassing. In fact he has hang-ups, mostly sentimental, about all manner of things. When Tandy says No, it’s a waste of time asking him again.’
Kenworthy sat back and let a drop of whisky rest on his tongue.
‘I remember a case I had just after the war, when I was leaning on a security suspect in Berlin in 1946. He was one of the few who defeated me—though, of course, everything was loaded on my side—and you’d have thought he had nothing going for him at all. He’d been gun-running against the Allies in Syria, and by some administrative miracle we had a near-perfect file on him. His movements in the Middle East were matched by the visas in his passport. But he beat me by obstinacy. If ever I were in trouble, Lord Furnival, I know what I’d fall back on. Unreason. If you have the nerve to be consistent—and as long as they lay off crude physical stuff—there’s no one can crack you. I’d been tackling this bod in bad French—it was the only common ground we had—and his was worse than mine. But when things started getting sticky for him, he simply ceased to understand the language. I tried Arabic through an interpreter—and that gave him a rest while we found one. It worked for a few minutes. Then he gave up understanding Arabic, demanded Turkish. And the same thing with that and various other European languages and desert dialects. We passed him on to a specialized Interrogation Camp where they could produce any lingo in the world, given time. The word I got, months later, was that our friend went on winning—until they found a weakness in his personal background and introduced an element of mental agony. Well—Alfred Tandy is like that Arab. He is unreason triumphant.’
‘I hope he’ll be treated to a spot of applied psychology as your Arab was.’
‘I don’t know how Gleed will handle him. I rang Gleed the moment I’d said goodbye to dear Alf. Felt quite a bastard for shopping him. The Kent police have him in transit in this direction at the moment.’
‘And you say he knows who the murderer is? You could hazard a guess at a name?’
‘No name that I’d care to mention at the moment,’ Kenworthy said.
‘Now you’re being exasperating.’
‘What else can I be? Tandy thinks he knows who killed Larner. He dropped colourable hints that it was someone near to the central nervous system of your show. But my suspicions are my own, and if I were to breathe them at the moment, there’d be no telling what action you’d take. And suppose I was wrong?’
‘So instead, I have to go around suspecting everyone.’
‘A healthy attitude. I hope that’s what you’re doing already.’
‘Well, leave that side of things to Gleed, Kenworthy. I haven’t engaged you to do his work for him. Your job is to keep me informed of what’s happening: not to try to make it happen. And the only thing that matters to me at the moment is getting Lindop back under control. It’s Lindop who has to be your priority. And God knows how you’re going to tackle him.’
‘In that nebulous region,’ Kenworthy said, ‘where blackmail and logical persuasion are barely distinguishable.’
‘There’s no need to make it sound quite so disgusting. Promise me that that is your main endeavour.’
‘No problem—the two cases—let’s call them the two aspects—are closely related.’
Kenworthy looked at the time.
‘I wonder if Lindop’s in bed yet.’
‘He’s not even on the premises, Kenworthy. That’s what peeves me. He’s ruined a day’s rehearsals by pulling out the main labour force—as well as the main fuses. And off he’s gone with his Deviants to
some pub date in Rotherham.’
Kenworthy grinned.
‘I know what Cantrell would do about that.’
‘And we both know what Lindop would then do with some of Larner’s choicest recordings.’
Chapter Nineteen
Kenworthy had made no haste to leave Furnival, and it was consequently very late before he was able to telephone Gleed, which he did from the public kiosk in the Peak Low Square. Gleed was in bed, reading the same page he had read every night for the past week. Kenworthy had not spoken to the Detective-Superintendent since he had rung him from Ramsgate to deliver Tandy into the hands of his transit captors.
‘I’ve seen Furnival and told him as much as it’s good for him to know. I had no more than a word with Cantrell. He appears to have upset Dyer. Dyer cut me dead on the stairs, but I don’t think there was anything personal in it. I think Dyer’s had more than enough.’
‘So you’ll be ready for a night’s repose?’
‘No. I cat-slumbered in the train. I want to talk to Lindop while he’s still weary from today. Dyer and Cantrell can wait till the morning.’
‘They’ll get here with Tandy sometime during the night. We’ve told the Press a man’s being brought here to help: no names. I shall go straight over and weigh in.’
‘You’ll not break Alf Tandy with words.’
‘I’ve got to try, though, haven’t I? Be in touch in the morning. And good luck with Lindop. By the way, I’ve had Fewter and Nall working all day on that crate of theatrical equipment that was delivered into the theatre under your eyes and Furnival’s, the morning Hajek lost his cool. I’m pretty sure that that’s how Larner’s corpse was brought in. But they came up with nothing—so categorically nothing that I’m sure I’m on the right track. The van can’t be traced. The driver and his mate can’t be traced. We even found the so-called delivery note that Hajek screwed up and threw down in the stalls. And that was something that must have been picked up from where the wind had blown it. It was an invoice for a prefabricated henhouse that was delivered in the village last week.’
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