‘Thank you, sir. Thank you, madam.’
The last customer, a fat wife with big thingies, annoyed him. She was one of those who had to have a look at the paper she’d bought, there and then. She was stopping other customers from getting to him to buy their Chronicles. Talk about blackouts! Billy had told him about customers who’d start eating an apple before they’d paid for it. Bugger that!
‘Chron-ic-al! Eve’ing Chron-ic-al!’
As he put it to himself later, what happened next was as unexpected as an office offering to carry your kitbag.
The fat woman screamed. She slapped his face. What was he supposed to have done? What was the matter with her? Why was she knocking seven bells out of her skirt? In her frantic behaviour she seemed oblivious of the fact that she was pushing and shoving his customers all over the place. She pushed him.
‘Hoy! I’ve only got one leg.’
When they fell on top of each other she landed on his stump. The pain he experienced made him scream oaths Tyneside men only use in the company of other men.
‘Don’t move, madam,’ said the young policeman. ‘I’ll get him.’
‘He’s not going anywhere,’ said the fat woman, I’m sitting on him. My husband is a solicitor. I wish to press charges. I am making a citizen’s arrest.’
She rolled her weight.
‘Missus, me leg.’
‘It’s not your legs I’m worried about, young man, it’s your hands.’
‘Get her off me, will you. Hire a crane if you have to.’
‘Cheek! If you are after sympathy you won’t get it from me. My husband lost an eye in the war.’
‘Excuse me, madam,’ said the policeman, ‘this is delicate work.’
‘It’s like having a sticking plaster removed,’ said the fat woman.
‘Stay still.’
‘It’s clinging on.’
‘Don’t move.’
‘Oh, my god, what is it?’
‘Come you here, my little beauty, don’t you go biting me, I’m a country boy. You bite me, I’ll bite you. I’ve had my policeman’s eye on you for quite a while. If you was human I’d be putting the bracelets on you; you running like that up the nice lady’s skirt. What a story to tell the lads back at the station. My first arrest a ferret. Your collar tells me you are someone’s pet.’
10
‘Something wrong?’ said Lady Elizabeth.
‘That was Rabbi Cohen on the phone,’ said Sir Charles. ‘Wants to know where Jack and George are.’
‘They haven’t turned up?’
‘No. They should have been there an hour ago. The Rabbi was in one of his Mount Sinai moods … very voluble; accused me of denying Jack access to his cultural heritage.
‘If they are not at the synagogue, where are they?’
‘I’ll phone Mildred and see if they are there. They might have gone trainspotting … George was telling me he only has one more ‘streak’ to spot, Mallard, I think it was, and he will have seen them all … the Labradors will be ever so disappointed. Mildred has told them to expect company. They are fond of George.’
11
The policeman looked at the disc attached to the collar round the ferret’s neck.
‘So,’ he said at last, ‘you’re called Moses, are you? And what’s this? You been used as a carrier pigeon?’
The policeman held the struggling ferret firmly and told it, ‘You ain’t going anywhere, my little beauty.’
The beast’s efforts to be free made it difficult for him to undo the elastic band someone had used to tie a screwed-up piece of paper to its collar.
‘If you were a drunk, my boy, I’d have you flat on your back by now,’ he told the ferret.
On the scrap of paper he eventually managed to free, he read: HELP Prisoners in Monument Operation SOB Jack and George.
If this Jack and George, whoever they were, hadn’t mentioned Operation SOB he’d have thought their asking for help a joke. Not many people knew about Operation Spies on Bikes. It was inside info. Everyone in the Force had been told to keep an eye on any Hitler Youth they saw, to be suspicious of anyone with an Irish accent. The inspector in charge had said, ‘We’re calling it Operation Spies on Bikes … Operation SOB.’
Prisoners in the Monument, eh? He looked across the road, pondered the Monument the way a man who knows nothing about car engines looks under the bonnet of a car. What to do?
‘What does it say?’ said the fat woman. ‘Someone asking for help?’
‘It’s written in pencil,’ mused the policeman, ‘a soft pencil.’
‘Who do you think you are, Sherlock Holmes?’
‘Hoy!’ said the newspaper seller. ‘I can’t sit down. You’ve broken my chair.’
‘What are you going to do about it?’ said the fat woman.
‘You broke it,’ said the newspaper seller.
‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ said the fat woman, ‘I was talking to the constable. What are you going to do about it? I am talking about the note, young man … the note.’
The policeman eased himself up and down on his toes.
‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘I’m going to ask you to move on, madam.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Be a good lady and move on. You are in danger of causing an obstruction. This here ferret’s the guilty party. May I suggest an apology to the gentleman with one leg?’
‘I mean, come on, missus,’ said the newspaper seller, keen to assert his rights now the law was on his side. ‘Do I look the sort of bloke who’d put his hand up a lady’s skirt?’
The look she gave him implied she thought him capable of anything, even murder.
The policeman coughed. He’d been warned about ‘domestics’; how dealing with ‘she’s stealing coal out of my coalhouse’ could lead to unpredictable consequences.
‘That ferret sitting on your helmet makes you look ridiculous,’ said the fat woman.
‘I am adapting to circumstances, madam,’ said the policeman, ‘and so should you. Do be a good lady and move on.’
To show he meant business he took out his notebook and looked her in the eye while licking the end of a pencil; that did the trick. He chose to ignore her reminding him her husband was a solicitor.
It was with a sense of a job well done that he watched her disappear into the crowd. He’d not yet had the pleasure of being cross examined by a lawyer in a court of law. Older colleagues had told him stories about lawyers. ‘They twist your words … Make sure you know your off-side from your near-side … They make you look stupid … We don’t like them and they don’t like us.’ His pals would enjoy hearing how he’d told off this fat wife who’d kept boasting that her husband was a solicitor.
‘Notice anything funny going on at the Monument?’ he asked the newspaper seller.
‘There were two kids, about the time the first edition came out, posh kids they looked, Norfolk jackets, very well dressed. One of them had blonde hair.’
‘What were they doing?’
‘Playing, I don’t know. If they hadn’t been posh kids I might have thought they were teasing the Pied Piper, that’s what the local kids do. He’s a rat catcher, works for the council; lots of rats around here. They come up from the river at night, you know, head straight for the fruit and veg in the Grainger Market. He keeps his traps and poisons in the Monument, at weekends he’s the ticket man for folk wanting to go to its top. There’s a little door lets you inside.’
‘How do you know this Pied Piper?’
‘He’s a customer.’
‘Why do kids tease him?’
‘Because he’s Irish. The local lads know he’s a rat catcher. That’s why they call him the Pied Piper. When they follow him he shouts at them in Irish. A customer told me, “That’s the Gaelic he’s screaming.�
�� He laughs at them when they ask him what he’s saying. When I come to think about it I’ve not seen him for the last few days. Hi! You don’t think because he’s Irish he’s anything to do with bombing the Assembly Rooms?’
‘Take the ferret. Don’t lose him, he’s evidence.’
‘Hoy! I’m a newspaper seller not the bloody RSPCA.’
12
The policeman thought about what to do. If this Jack and George were prisoners inside the Monument who was holding them and why? Were they the two boys seen by the newspaper seller? Had someone locked them up for a joke? This Pied Piper fellow, for example. If the IRA was involved they might be armed. He had a truncheon. Operation SOB, he never thought he’d be involved in it. How did this Jack and George know about SOB? Telling his new pals back at the station that he’d arrested a ferret would be a laugh but, if he could tell them he’d foiled an IRA kidnap … he’d be a hero, straight up the ladder into CID.
On a trial for the police football team he’d been told he should learn to pass. The sergeant in charge of the team had started calling him ‘Sticky Ball’.
‘Learn to pass and we’ll consider you,’ he’d been told.
‘I scored a goal.’
‘You were lucky, son; take a telling … learn to pass.’
Should he investigate without telling anyone? Keep the ball to himself. Or, be a good team player, and report his findings to Pilgrim Street? The desk sergeant was the football coach. He could hear him, ‘You should be on the beat, Sticky Ball; you’re not due back for another thirty minutes.’
He was a big lad, a good six foot two inches. He drew his truncheon. He’d give the door at the bottom of the Monument a good banging; that’s what he’d do. He’d let whoever might be in there know he wasn’t pussy-footing around.
13
Even in the short time it had taken the policeman to cross the road to the Monument the newspaper seller realised that while it was true that a one legged man sold more newspapers than a man with two legs, a one legged man with a ferret on his shoulder sold even more.
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Does it have a name?’
‘Moses.’
‘Funny name for a weasel.’
‘It’s a ferret.’
‘Funny name for a ferret as well.’
‘Chron-ic-al!’
‘Thank you, madam.’
‘What’s it called?’
‘Moses.’
‘He’ll keep your neck warm. I have a stole just like that … so, I should know.’
‘Chron-ic-al! Read all about it!’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘That ferret on your shoulder should be a parrot, with your crutch you could be Long John Silver … black humour, I’m afraid, but you have to keep smiling, don’t you?’
‘You read my mind, sir, keep smiling, that’s what I say to myself every hour of every day I’m standing here selling the Chronicle … keep smiling.’
‘Lose it in the war?’
‘Somme.’
‘What happened to your chair?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘At Ypres I lost half my arse. At least you can have a good shit; I can’t.’
He watched the fellow limp away. There should be no more wars although the prospect of one about to happen did sell newspapers.
‘Chron-ic-al!’
He wondered what ferrets ate. They put them down rabbit holes, didn’t they? They were meat eaters … had to be with teeth like that. He knew a butcher in the Grainger Market. He’d have to keep the animal in the pink of health. It wouldn’t go down well with the customers if it looked off colour. It didn’t matter if he looked starved; a hungry-looking paper seller probably sold more newspapers than a seller who looked well fed. But an animal that looked uncared for, that was different. He’d get reported to the RSCPA. People were funny about animals. But would the cost of feeding the beast be more than the extra profit it brought in?
The gunshot made him jump.
‘What’s that?’ said a customer.
‘It’s a car back-firing,’ said another.
‘It’s a gun been fired,’ said the newspaper seller. ‘I should know, I’ve heard plenty.’
‘Has the war started?’
All looked towards the Monument. Someone shouted that a policeman had been shot.
14
Sir Charles and CB were in Sir Charles’s study discussing what to do with the Hitler Youth if Britain declared war on Germany.
‘It helps make ‘em soft,’ said CB, dunking a ginger snap into a mug of tea.
‘Damn,’ said Sir Charles, who was doing the same, ‘I’ve lost half my biscuit.’
‘I’ve lost a wife and daughter.’
‘You sound bitter.’
‘I am.’
Sir Charles studied his neighbour. They’d always been acquaintances rather than friends. He sympathised with CB, of course he did, but, there was nothing he could do to reverse what had happened. You could not bring back the dead.
‘If it comes to war,’ said Sir Charles, ‘I’ll do my best to put in a word for you. I know it means a lot to you.’
‘Thank you, Charles; getting a piece of the action will take my mind off things.’
‘If it comes to war the Hitler Youth will be enemy aliens.’
‘You will want them rounded up?’
‘A job for the Territorials, don’t you think, give ‘em a taste of action.’
‘I’d not call rounding up a few members of the Hitler Youth “action”. Your refugee boy Jack has killed two of them already. Lots of ‘em are sick. If they don’t come quietly I’ll let them know who is boss. War or no war, I’ll keep an eye on them.’
‘Good man, I know I can rely on you. May I borrow your spoon? Elizabeth is always telling me I dunk for too long.’
15
Bert handed Sir Charles a sealed envelope.
‘From the Vicarage?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I see it’s marked TOP SECRET,’ said CB. ‘Do you want me to disappear?’
‘Of course not. You are on our side. Bert, more ginger snaps, please.’
‘Dunking accident, sir?’
‘Yes.’
Sir Charles broke the envelope’s seal.
‘It must be important, Charles, it’s marked TOP SECRET,’ said CB.
‘MI5 mark everything TOP SECRET?’
‘Oh.’
The envelope contained about twenty postcard-size black and white photographs. Someone had been photographing the masts. Most looked as if they’d been taken from a passing car – they were blurred. Others showed the towers in close-up detail. A telephoto lens? Had someone gained access to the site?
A note explained how a thirty-five millimetre film cassette had been found in the rucksack Jack had collected from the Left Luggage Office. ‘It was in an oilskin bag hidden in sand. We nearly didn’t spot it. You have foiled a plot, Charles. If the Nazis had gotten their hands on these snaps we’d have been sharing the secrets of the masts with Hitler. You’ll get a gong for this, Charles. The Hitler Youth weren’t coming to photograph the masts, they were coming to collect photographs of them taken by the IRA. What a lot we have to tell Freddy when he gets better.’
Sir Charles handed the note to CB.
‘I say, thank you. I’ve never read anything marked “Top Secret” before. What’s special about the masts?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘What sort of gong will they give you? I don’t suppose there’s any chance of you letting me have a slice of the action? Between you and me, Charles, I’m desperate to win a gong.’
‘Your ginger snaps, sir,’ said Bert. ‘And, sir, as soon as you are free, Lady Elizabeth wishes to have a word.’
16
‘
Charles, it’s like coming back to a crossword clue after walking in the garden. The walk clears one’s head, so to speak and one is suddenly able to get a clue that has stumped one for hours.’
‘What are you on about?’
‘The man struggling to carry four Gladstone bags. I recognised his face but couldn’t place him.’
‘But now you have?’
‘He was the man driving the car with the smashed windscreen.’
‘Where’d you see him?’
‘At the railway station. It was the struggle he was having to carry the four Gladstone bags that made me notice him. Who needs four Gladstone bags?’
‘A man with four Gladstone bags.’
‘He got in the same compartment as Jack and George.’
‘I do hope this chap didn’t have a “funny” ear.’
Lady Elizabeth closed her eyes. When she reopened them she was full of fresh insights.
‘When he put down the Gladstone bags to open the carriage door he twiddled with an earlobe. It seemed to me like a habit. You do the same with your wedding ring.’
‘Do I?’
‘Yes.’
‘I never knew that.’
‘Ditto the man with four Gladstone bags. I’m sure he was twiddling a minor deformity.’
‘You should have told me this before. If you are right the man with the four Gladstone bags could be Doyle.’
‘The man who tried to kill Marigold?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does he have a “funny” ear?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nobody told me that. This is what comes of you not telling me things. Freddy does the same to Dot. I think you men like having secrets. It makes you feel important. I’m sure it does.’
‘How certain are you that this fellow you saw with four Gladstone bags is who you think he is?’
‘It’s him. I know it’s him.’
‘No news from Mildred?’
‘I rang five minutes ago.’
‘No sign of Jack and George?’
‘No.’
‘What about Rabbi Cohen?’
Spies on Bikes Page 25