Passion in the Peak

by John Buxton Hilton

  ‘The theatre is patrolled at night, I take it?’

  ‘By Cantrell’s men.’

  ‘I’m thinking about when the crate can have been unpacked and the body transferred.’ Kenworthy said. ‘It can only have been by night.’

  Kenworthy rang off. He knew that he had an hour or two in front of him. If The Deviants had a pub engagement it was unlikely that they would leave the premises at closing time. The night could be advanced before they fetched up back in Peak Low. So Kenworthy went up to the Hall unhurriedly on foot. It was between three and four o’clock when he heard on the hill an engine that he diagnosed as a minibus. He moved into a convenient shadow when he saw where they were going to park. He was not near enough to differentiate properly between the personalities: two men, two women, one of whom might be old enough, to judge from his movements, to be of Stalagmite vintage. They had musical instruments in cases. Lindop was the fifth member of the party and had heavy equipment, including speakers. Kenworthy heard him say that he was going to leave most of his stuff locked in the van until morning: there were just a few things that he was not going to allow out of his possession. His stock of compromising tapes, for a certainty. Did he take them to bed with him?

  The two couples had reached the main entrance to the Hall while Lindop was still fiddling about at the vehicle. He was leaning in at the rear door, unaware that anyone was behind him, when Kenworthy touched his back. He swung round, ready for anything, the edge of his right hand poised for a kung-fu chop. Kenworthy raised a warning hand.

  ‘Spare me, Lindop. I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Not tonight, you don’t.’

  ‘We’ll keep it short.’

  ‘Here and now, then. Not one minute more than five. Shall we get into the van?’

  ‘Upstairs in your quarters, I think.’

  ‘That means you’ll be there half the night.’

  ‘I’m just back from seeing Alfie Tandy,’ Kenworthy said. ‘And Sue Bistort into the bargain.’

  ‘Where the devil did you unearth her—and why?’

  ‘Alfie had looked her up, the moment he got back to the Smoke. Very attentive to Sue Bistort, is Alfie. He seems to be a pretty faithful type, when he takes someone under his wing.’

  ‘Faithful? Yes—that’s one word you could use. OK, then. Curiosity doth make idiots of us all.’

  Lindop’s room, not surprisingly, was an overflow workshop: a light work-bench, tape splicers, a bank of high-fi reproduction panels, and everywhere magnetic tape of all calibres in every conceivable form of cassette and container.

  ‘Shall I percolate? Or would you prefer usquebaugh?’

  ‘Percolate, please. As you guessed—we may not conclude this immediately.’

  ‘I was afraid not. Unless I conclude it by dropping off.’

  ‘I don’t think you will,’ Kenworthy said. ‘I think you’ll be very wide awake in a minute or two.’

  Lindop looked at him with burlesque expectancy.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, you can do me a favour for a start. Lord Furnival is getting a little crotchety over my dilatory ways. So put me in a position to tell him I’ve actually done something he’s asked me to.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Give into my safe-keeping two stacks of tapes, clearly labelled model Larner—and far from model Larner.’

  Lindop laughed.

  ‘And you think there’s some slight grain of hope that I’d agree to that? I couldn’t, in any case. The stuff has never been properly logged and labelled. I’ve never got round to indexing it. That’s one reason.’

  ‘And the other?’

  ‘You’re not going to spoil the best bit of fun I’ve had since I was taken to my first pantomime.’

  ‘I think I’m going to change your mind for you within the next quarter of an hour, Lindop.’

  Lindop pulled one of his repertoire of funny faces—the one that said that he was prepared to hear any man out, provided he didn’t repeat himself too often.

  ‘I told you I’d seen Susan Bistort.’

  ‘Poor old Snakeweed. How was she? I’ll bet she didn’t ask after me.’

  ‘No. She wasn’t really interested in asking after anyone. In fact, protracted conversation on any single topic was a bit of a strain on her—and on me.’

  ‘Poor old Snakey!’

  ‘Anything behind the nickname?’

  ‘Bistort—Snakeweed—two names for the same plant. A weed. We’d learned Bistort in Nature Study and chose it as her stage-name. It sort of followed from Bickerstaffe. Then our biology teacher, the sarcastic cowson, saw her name on the board outside the Stalag and christened her Snakeweed in class.’

  ‘She’s in a bad way.’

  ‘No need to tell me that. There was a time when I might have got steamed up about it. One more down to Larner.’

  ‘But you’ve cooled off about her?’

  ‘Yes and no. I’m not sure that it’s fair to blame every damned thing on Larner. Snakeweed was perfectly capable of going wrong in her own right.’

  Kenworthy drank coffee, set his cup down on a minimally vacant table-corner.

  ‘You mean you’re no longer in love with her?’

  Lindop looked at him in surprise at first, then for a second as if his come-back might be short-tempered. Then he made another face.

  ‘Not since I was seventeen.’

  ‘At which time all The Stalagmites were in love with her?’

  ‘Ah, but I was the only one who loved her for the sake of her beautiful soul.’

  ‘And what put you off?’

  ‘She married Larner.’

  ‘And since they split up?’

  ‘I’ve not come across her much. I saw her once when I was back in London. I saw what the liquor was doing to her. I saw what she was having to do to pay for it. And I didn’t fancy having to finance her. It didn’t make me feel any more kindly disposed towards Larner.’

  ‘You weren’t tempted to try and take her in hand?’

  ‘I was never that much of an optimist. What are you getting at, Kenworthy?’

  ‘I just wondered.’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you the truth. I found her revolting. Make sure that goes into your notes.’

  ‘OK. Forget her. She was too woolly-minded to know what she was doing or saying, but she did put me on the road to Alfie Tandy. And also for my notes, Lindop, I want to know precisely what he had against Larner. He did tell me, but I need to know how much to believe. I gather he had a nephew.’

  ‘Barney Chisholm. Alfie’s sister’s child, brought up by Alfie’s mum. Barney was percussion and vocals—not that we ever let him do a solo. And he wasn’t all that clever on the drums. He couldn’t maintain a tempo for two bars at a stretch. And in the soulful passages, he sounded as if he was knocking up a henhouse. Believe me, Kenworthy, The Stalagmites were bad. But none of the others was as bad as Barney. We had to put up with him because Alfie was grub-staking us.’

  ‘Who else was in the group? Anyone else who stayed in that kind of music?’

  ‘Only Ed Manterfield. He’s with The Deviants. He’s learned a few things since the Seven Sisters Road. I think if The Deviants can only get a disc out of this show—’

  ‘Let’s get back to young Barney.’

  ‘We had to put up with him. We needed Alfie’s shekels. But like us all, Barney was stranded when Dyer pinched Larner. We were sacked from the dance-hall at Stockwell where Dyer had first put us. Izzy Ginsberg wouldn’t have us back. And you’ve got to understand this about The Stalagmites, Kenworthy—rotten as we were, all we lived for was what we were doing. Now we’d no lead singer, no lead guitar, no Snakeweed, because she went along with Larner in his early days. We broke up. I went to the Tech. Barney followed a lamentably common course. Too much drink, too many joints, from pot to LSD, got truly hooked, vanished from his normal circles—until he turned up in a temporary nick they’d put up at a pop festival. He died in that nick—of just about everything: drug o
verdose, alcoholic poisoning, septic arm from a dirty needle, malnutrition and backhanders across the mouth from the fuzz who busted him.’

  ‘Lucky to be identified, wasn’t he? Was he with pals?’

  ‘He had no pals. He had his name tattooed on his arm. And that’s where Alfred began his long pilgrimage as the agent of Nemesis.’

  ‘Alfie was quite frank with me about it,’ Kenworthy said. ‘He made no effort to deny intent.’

  ‘He wouldn’t. There was always something childishly honest about Alfred. He’d spent a good deal of his life being honest about going to kill Larner.’

  ‘He had it all planned, too, didn’t he—those confessions?’

  ‘Kenworthy, you can’t possibly, in a short time, have got to know Alf Tandy the way we knew him. When Alfie got an idea in his head, it was there. He was stuck with it—and so was everybody round him. He did have the germ of an idea, sometimes, but like everything else he had it was half-baked. But any brainwave he had got the full treatment.’

  Lindop was a confident arbiter of other men’s conduct.

  ‘And there was nothing as half-baked as his scheme to get known as a compulsive confessor. You’ve dug that up, obviously. His idea was to join the confession gang for a few years. He’d get his arse kicked out of every murder inquiry he could make his way into. So when he confessed to a murder he had done, he’d be likewise shot out on his neck. Crack-brained? Pure Tandy. And it seems he went too far, as usual. He really peeved one of your oppos, and got done for some kind of obstruction. They warned him that next time, he’d find himself doing bird. And that was writing on the wall in poster paint for Alfie. He didn’t fancy going inside. He’d too many outdoor interests. He pulled out of confessing.’

  ‘Tandy was very honest with me, Lindop. I’ve said that before, I know, but it was striking. It was like having honesty shot at you from a sawn-off shotgun. He spent the inside of his lifetime anticipating the moment when he was going to kill Larner. Isn’t that what the philosophers call existentialism? Giving yourself a reason for living? He didn’t put it in those words—but that’s what he meant. And he got as far as strewing his spikes in the road—but they didn’t do the job for him. Larner came blasting up Brackdale Hill, throttle wide open—sending macho messages back to Joan Culver. But he hadn’t much speed towards the top of the gradient, and when Ricarda Mommsen came out of the shadows, signalling him to stop, he succeeded in braking—though not before he’d pushed her through the wall. I shall never forget Alfie’s face, over a glass of milk stout, while he was telling me this.’

  Nor would he. In The Prussian Eagle, in the unseasidely Plains of Waterloo in Ramsgate, Alfie Tandy had leaned across the table, his forearms parallel in front of him. He had talked in toneless Cockney vowels, in the ponderous language nourished by a lifetime of evening classes.

  ‘When he saw I’d arrived in Peak Low, Mr Kenworthy, it must have crossed his mind that I was going to kill him.’

  ‘I can’t understand why you didn’t kill him years ago,’ Kenworthy had said.

  ‘If I tell you, will you believe me? The thought of killing Johnny Lummis has kept me going for years. It was when they made him Jesus Christ that I knew it had to be soon.’

  Kenworthy put something into the telling of it, and Lindop was not unimpressed. But it took him by surprise to see the extent of Kenworthy’s involvement.

  ‘It was Alfie who spread those spikes in the road, but they didn’t kill Larner. And Alfie was waiting round the corner with a gun in his hand, just in case a coup de grâce was needed. But he couldn’t pull the trigger. After all those years of dedication, he still couldn’t do it. His finger wouldn’t put that final pressure on. But he knows who was waiting to beat Larner about the head—because he saw who else was out and about on that stretch of road. All he’d say then was that it was someone close to the top people. Though I saw it myself, Lindop, I’m not without experience of persuading people to tell me things they hadn’t intended to tell me. But I know no way of getting facts out of Alfie Tandy that he wants to keep to himself. I even believe that physical torture would be counter-productive.’

  ‘It would get you nowhere,’ Lindop said. ‘I’ve seen Alfie Tandy with his heels dug in. Beyond a certain point, the man has no sense. And that’s a strength in itself, when one’s opponent is a man of normal standards.’

  ‘I know.’

  Kenworthy told Lindop the story of the Arab gun-runner.

  ‘So I can understand why my one-time colleague Arthur Hurd lost his temper with him. In my opinion, his whole concept was illogical, anyway.’

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘Why save all his bile for Wayne Larner? Wouldn’t the more obvious target have been Dyer?’

  ‘Not to Alfie’s way of thinking.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because Alfie had never put money and effort into Dyer. Dyer wasn’t family. And Alfie looked on The Stalagmites as his own flesh and blood. He had put money and effort into us—though he wasn’t all that popular with us, you know, despite all we owed him.’

  ‘But to your way of thinking?’

  ‘My way of thinking?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you have settled for killing Dyer, if you’d been Alfie Tandy?’

  ‘I’ve never considered killing anyone,’ Lindop said, and he said it with crisp emphasis.

  ‘Not even wishfully?’

  ‘Why should I? I’ve led my own life. I think I can claim not to have failed on my own pitch.’

  There followed a short silence and Kenworthy seemed disinclined to be the one to break it.

  ‘So what happens now?’ Lindop asked him.

  ‘Alfie is being brought here. To help. He’s probably arriving just about now. Of course, you and I know how helpful he’s going to be. And the other thing that’s going to happen is that you, Lindop, are going to hand me two sets of tapes.’

  ‘And if I did, how would you know how much back-up stuff I’d kept in reserve? Do you have to spoil this for me, Kenworthy? I promise you I’m not going to bugger up any public performance. Damn it, I have some loyalty to showbiz—I have to live by it. But don’t you see—Furnival is like Alfie Tandy’s Wayne Larner, wondering if and when Alfie Tandy is going to kill him. Furnival’s just waiting for it to happen—the wrecking stroke. I’ve got tapes of Larner: tapes of Larner drunk, tapes of Larner high, tapes of Larner obscene, Larner singing The Good Ship Venus. I’ve even got an early taped rehearsal of The Stalagmites. How would that sound on the Mount of Olives? Furnival daren’t sack me. What security would it bring him, knowing I’m running wild?’

  ‘He won’t be sacking you, Lindop—nor will you be running wild. The only thing I could get out of Tandy was that the identity of the murderer will shake the top people. So where does that put you? Aren’t you the obvious man to be framed? Oh, I know you have an alibi for Saturday night—but that won’t stop them getting you as an accomplice. The stunts you’ve been involved in—and you know what I’m talking about—I wouldn’t put it past them proving that you masterminded the whole shoot. I tell you, I know which way Gleed’s mind is working. I can see you going down, Lindop. Yesterday, you used the word vulnerable. Do you appreciate just how vulnerable you are?’

  ‘So how does it help if I hand over the tapes? I can see it helps you—’

  ‘It’s time you made an honest man of yourself, Lindop. So you’ve got Furnival over a barrel. And where does that put you next year—and the year after? Stop fooling about, man. Get rid of everything that puts you on the wrong side—and let it be seen that you’ve got rid of it. Go and talk openly to Gleed—about the Mary Magdalenes for one thing.’

  ‘You make it sound like sense, Kenworthy—and I’m never too happy when a man in your position appears to be talking sense. It needs thinking about. I’ve always been a loner. I was a loner in the Stalagmite days.’

  ‘You’ll be a loner if you find yourself banned from every sound console in the country.’

  ‘I’m not m
aking my mind up here and now, in your presence, Kenworthy. When a man’s had an idea in his head for years—’

  ‘He stands every chance of ending up like Alfie Tandy.’

  The thought obviously startled Lindop, but he remained stubborn.

  ‘That almost does it. But I’m going to walk all round it again.’

  ‘Well, don’t take too long. You’re going to be a watched man.’

  Chapter Twenty

  The troubled quiet of a hospital at night is a muffled microcosm of the human condition at a pathetic extreme: a distant fan, here a groan, there a cough, a delirious obsession, a repeated phrase that means nothing except to the man who has it on his mind.

  Gleed had rostered three women officers to invigilate by Ricarda Mommsen’s bed, and they reacted in contrasting manners.

  Sonia Saye, 10.0 p.m. to 6.0 a.m., was bored beyond toleration: another long downhill chute away from her determination to make a career in the Force. The paperback on her lap advanced only a page or two at each session. The atmosphere—for Sonia—killed concentration. She wanted to be where there was a different kind of action. And there was no sort of empathy between herself and the muttering, murmuring, unlovely woman for whom nobody could do anything except with drip-feed and sponge.

  Dorothy Purvis, the afternoon shift, was more interested in the thrown-up by-plots of the ward than in a vegetable-woman with whom she could not communicate. There were a few of the nurses who occasionally tried, whispering a word or two close to the unresponding features, as if it were clinically desirable to penetrate into her consciousness. The more experienced neither believed nor disbelieved that she might ever be rehabilitated. Everybody was waiting.

  Kate Seymour—everybody called her Jane, though it was not her baptismal name—was on duty the night Ricarda Mommsen spoke a line of verse. Death had visited the ward earlier in the evening: curtains drawn round a bed against the opposite wall; cardiac arrest, oxygen cylinders, the ultimate failure of the resuscitatory drills. Then trivialities loomed important. The staff nurse was trimming the fingernails of the cadaver before the next of kin arrived.