The Thing Itself bt-3

by Peter Guttridge

  I made a space for myself at the bar and took a sip of the beer. I could see Charteris over in the corner.

  He was with a man in his early forties. Clipped moustache, hair plastered back, check sports jacket, striped tie. They were sitting at a table, so I couldn’t see his legs, but I guessed cavalry twill. Ex-army officer. And I guessed white socks. He was one of the brown-ring boys, I could tell.

  There were a lot in Brighton. Brighton Pier gave its name to them in rhyming slang: Brighton Pier = queer.

  I watched Charteris. He didn’t notice, although he kept flicking his eyes round the pub. He and the captain kept a certain distance between them. All very respectable. Two men talking in a pub. But I knew.

  One of my first jobs when I joined the police was going to a crime scene in Hove. A queer suicide pact. I didn’t know what it was about Brighton that attracted all the back-room boys, then another bobby told me it was all the bloody thespians down here.

  ‘They prefer backstage to front-of-house,’ he said. ‘Half of them are fairies and half of them pretend to be, putting it on.’

  When I was younger I just wanted to punch them in the face, and if they approached me I did. But now I wasn’t so definite. My pal Philip Simpson told me once, after a bit of a pub crawl, that he liked boys as much as girls.

  ‘Why limit your options?’ he said.

  ‘Live and let live, Phil,’ I told him, ‘but keep your hands off my trouser buttons.’

  So my views mellowed a bit, especially as I saw how quick Simpson was to get stuck in when it was required. And even when it wasn’t.

  Anyway, we broke down the door of this flat in Hove. Big living room, nice furniture. There was a man lying by the fire. He was wearing a blooming cravat. His head was near the gas fire. There was a terrible smell of gas.

  We cranked the window open. The hot air didn’t really gush in, it just hung there, but the gas eventually cleared away.

  It was too late for the man in the bedroom. He was my first dead body. His tongue looked horrible, like a fat slug, hanging down from one side of his mouth. There were blankets tucked up round his neck.

  It was a strange scene. Everything so tidy — it looked like a film set, especially as they were so well dressed. That cravat.

  I felt sorry for the one who survived — the bloke lying by the gas fire. He got done and put away in prison, which seemed bloody harsh. Though you know what they say about queers in prison.

  The next time I saw Charteris, he was in SS Brighton, the big new swimming pool on the seafront, ogling the girls draped around the pool. Same reason I was there.

  I came up behind him quiet — though a stampede wouldn’t have made any difference as the noise bounced around so much in there — and flicked his back with my towel.

  ‘Oy!’ he said, turning so fast he almost slipped on the wet floor. ‘Don, you almost copped for that. ’Ere, that’s almost a whatchamacallit.’

  ‘A pun,’ I said.

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘But not a very good one.’

  ‘You going in?’ he said.

  ‘Bit nippy for me. All very well having a seawater pool but they should warm it up before it gets here.’

  ‘At least they take the fishes out,’ he said, flashing a grin.

  He had a quick sense of humour did Charteris. He was a good-looking boy with black wavy hair and a little Ronald Colman moustache.

  I smiled and said to him: ‘How’s the Galloping Major?’

  He looked shifty for a moment.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know. The Bath Arms the other night?’

  ‘Oh him. Just a party member, Don. A fellow Blackshirt.’

  ‘Come off it, Charteris, and we’ll get along much better. I know your game.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘You’re a cut-rate gigolo.’

  ‘No need to be insulting, Don.’

  ‘Which bit?’

  He grinned again.

  ‘Cut-rate.’

  ‘So what’s your game? He just pays for your company or you get into a bit of blackmail with him after?’

  Charteris looked around.

  ‘Nothing he can’t afford.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Is Jack Notyre in the same line of work?’

  Charteris looked sly.

  ‘He’s a step up. Managerial.’

  I frowned.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘He’s living with a tart. And off her.’

  I digested that.

  ‘Charteris — what are you both?’

  He gave me the wide-eyes.

  ‘Just men trying to make a living.’ He leaned in. ‘He’s taking me to Eastbourne for a fortnight. In a caravan.’

  ‘Notyre?’

  ‘The Galloping Major.’

  ‘Definitely not cut-rate,’ I said sarcastically. He looked a bit miffed at that.

  ‘What’s it to you anyway?’ he said.

  ‘It’s illegal,’ I said.

  ‘So are a lot of things you turn a blind eye to.’

  He stepped back as I stepped forward.

  ‘I’m just saying, Don. Is it a cut you want?’

  ‘I want information, Martin Charteris. Always. Good stuff. Keep your ears open when you’re up to your shenanigans. Keep me informed and we’ll continue to get along fine.’

  In May 1934 quite a few things happened. For one thing, Jack Notyre started work at the Skylark as a waiter. I think it was because there was a waitress there he was doing things with and there was a room out the back they’d disappear to from time to time.

  Then Oswald Mosley came to Brighton on a visit.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Victor Tempest exercise book two

  There was a big meeting on in Olympia in June and Oswald Mosley was rallying the troops up and down the country. He brought a few of his bigwigs down. He stayed at the Grand, of course. The local branch hired the Music Room in the Royal Pavilion for the meeting. Very ornate. We were all sitting there waiting when the back doors opened and he came in with about a dozen men. We jumped to our feet and I felt a fool half-heartedly shouting: ‘Hail Mosley!’

  He was a big man — around six feet four — and held himself very erect. His walk was an odd stride. I’d been told he’d broken his ankle twice. Once in 1914 at Sandhurst, jumping out of a window to escape some other cadets who were out to get him. He fell thirty-five feet. Then, when he’d finished his training to be a flier in the First World War, he broke it again when he crashed his plane at Shoreham, showing off in front of his mum and her friends.

  Before his ankle had healed he’d gone off to fight in the trenches. His leg rotted. He was invalided out and ended up with one leg an inch and a half shorter than the other. Hence the limp. Even so, after a twenty-year lay-off he came back into fencing in 1932 and was a runner-up in the British epee championship.

  You had to admire someone with that determination. But at the same time you could see why I wondered whether the other cadets would have thrown him out of the window if he hadn’t done it himself.

  He was arrogant and vain. He stood behind the top table and thirty or so of us sat waiting. There were four men sitting with him. The rest were his bodyguard, stationed at the doors now. Strapping blokes, all my sort of height.

  He introduced his companions — his Top Table, he called them. William Joyce — another tall man. I’d heard him speak when I first joined up. Bloody clever bloke. A real orator. He’d started off quoting Greek. He said it was Greek — it was double Dutch to me. When he wanted to make a point, he put his right foot forward and shook his fist, his jaw thrust out. He had a bad scar running from his ear to his mouth — he’d been slashed with a cut-throat razor in a street fight with the Reds. He became notorious later, of course, as Lord Haw-Haw. I knew his hangman, but I’ll get on to that in due course.

  He sat now, leaning forward on the table, his chin resting on his fist, scanning the room with keen eyes. I was sitting in the fr
ont with Philip and Charlie. We’d changed into our Blackshirt uniforms in the toilets downstairs. It was the first time we’d worn the jackboots. Bloody hell. It took us about ten minutes to get them on, three of us tugging at the same boot, weak with laughter. You had to get your foot as if you were standing on tiptoe in order to get it in. We’d decided we wouldn’t get them off again this side of Christmas.

  William Joyce kept glancing at me. I thought I was imagining it until he leaned over to the man next to him and whispered something, pointing my way. The man next to him gave me a cold, appraising look, then nodded. Maybe Joyce was thinking what I was thinking: that this man, though slighter than me, looked like me twenty years on. Then again, I am a type. Aryan poster boy. Tall, thick shock of blond hair, blue eyes, long face.

  The man was introduced as Eric Knowles, who had fought alongside Mosley in the trenches and was now one of his most important aides. His duties weren’t specified.

  I only remember the name of one of the men on the other side of Mosley. Captain Ralph Morrison, the BUF’s quartermaster. I knew him better as the Galloping Major.

  I glanced back to where Charteris was sitting. He caught my eye but sat there as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Then gave a quick wink.

  Mosley launched into a long speech about the parliamentary system having failed us. Mosley wasn’t a natural orator — I’d heard he practised in front of the mirror and had taken lessons in voice production. His voice was shrill. He yelled at us as if he was at a mass rally of thousands instead of in a small room with forty people. It was exhausting.

  At the end there were cups of tea, but somebody — Joyce, I think — produced a couple of bottles of whisky so we all toasted Mosley and the party out of chipped cups. Mosley went round speaking to each of us in turn. Joyce and Knowles came over to me.

  ‘Are you in work?’ Knowles said.

  I nodded.

  ‘You’re a big lad,’ Joyce said. ‘Can you look after yourself?’

  ‘So far,’ I said.

  Knowles gestured to a couple of the big men at the door.

  ‘We’re always looking for fit fellows to join our leader’s praetorian guard. Are you interested?’

  ‘In theory,’ I said. ‘But I like to work my brain too.’

  Both men looked at me but I held their look.

  ‘Do you?’ Joyce finally said. ‘Do you indeed?’

  ‘What’s your name?’ Knowles said, taking out a small pad with a pencil sticking out of one end.

  ‘Victor Tempest.’

  ‘OK. Well, we’d definitely like you to attend the Olympia meeting on the seventh of June. We’ll be in touch.’

  Just then Oswald Mosley joined us. I didn’t know what the form was so I stood to attention. He appraised me for a moment.

  ‘Do you box?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He suddenly feinted a left jab at my head. I swayed out of the way and automatically got my fists up and shifted my feet. He smiled and opened his fist to give me a pat on the arm.

  ‘Quick reflexes.’

  ‘He says he’s got a brain too, sir,’ Joyce said drily. ‘Name is Victor Tempest.’

  ‘Mind and body — that’s good. That’s what we should all aim for. Where are you from, Tempest?’

  ‘I was born and bred in Haywards Heath, sir, but the family is from Blackburn.’

  ‘A fellow northerner,’ Mosley said in his upper-class drawl. ‘My family is from Manchester — Rolleston’s our home. Got to protect our cotton.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘What did you father do?’

  ‘He was a weaver, sir, but he died in the war. I never knew him.’

  I was aware that during this conversation both Joyce and Knowles were staring at me intently, weighing me up.

  ‘A lot of good men died far too young.’ He looked from Knowles to Joyce then back at me. ‘We could do with a good man in the north-west. A man with a brain.’

  ‘He’s in work,’ Knowles said.

  ‘Quick advancement for the right people in the BUF,’ Mosley said, his eyes still fixed on me. ‘I promote on merit. What’s your job?’

  I lowered my voice. Unless Charteris had blabbed, nobody in the branch knew Simpson, Ridge and I were policemen.

  ‘I’m a bobby, sir. A constable.’

  Mosley tilted his head to one side.

  ‘Are you? Are you? Good man — I already know then that you stand for law and order — as do we.’

  He exchanged glances with Joyce and Knowles again.

  ‘Stay where you are for now but let’s talk again after Olympia. That rally will be the making of us. Eric, make a note.’

  ‘Already done, sir.’

  And that was it. I left that meeting thinking this day could mark the start of a new life in uncharted territories for me — 10th May 1934. The same day the first Brighton Trunk Murder was committed, though nobody knew it then.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Victor Tempest exercise book two cont.

  Over the next few weeks I talked with Charlie and Philip about what I should do. I had a nice little number in Brighton. Did I want to chuck it in for the uncertainties of the northern wilderness? I was keen to get on, but Charlie pointed out that in the police that didn’t have to mean promotion. Getting on financially, being able to afford the good things in life, was more important.

  I thought I saw Eric Knowles in Brighton once, going into the Grand. I wondered about having a talk with him but I wasn’t sure it was him, I didn’t know what to say and I was a bit discombobulated after an unexpected sexual encounter underneath the West Pier.

  The thing was, I enjoyed my time in Brighton. The girls were easy, for one thing. I decided to put a career with the BUF out of my mind until the Olympia rally.

  The days before, the newspapers were full of it, especially the Daily Mail. On 6th June, though nobody knew this at the time either, the trunk containing the torso of the second murder victim was deposited at Brighton station left luggage office. The next day Philip Simpson and I took an early train up to London. Charlie Ridge couldn’t make it — he’d suddenly been given a double shift. We were in our civvies, our Blackshirt uniforms in bags. We intended to change at Olympia. A couple of dozen from Brighton were going up on a later train.

  That Olympia meeting is now famous. This vast conference hall with about 12,000 people in the audience. A lot of society people and nobs. About 2,000 of us had been bussed in from all over the country. There were also around a thousand people out to disrupt the meeting.

  Blackshirts around the auditorium were chanting: ‘Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate? M-o-s-l-e-y. . MOSLEY!’ It was several years before the opposition came up with a counter chant: ‘Hitler and Mosley, what are they for? Thuggery, buggery, hunger and war!’

  When Mosley came on, there was an enormous roar and a discernible amount of booing. He yelled his speech without notes, head thrust forward, fists on hips. I didn’t really catch a word of it. Reading about it in the Mail the next day, he said once in power he would pass a bill to enable the prime minister and a small cabinet of five to bypass parliament to make laws. He would also abolish other political parties.

  Whilst he was saying all this, hecklers were being ejected. The stewards were forceful. I was stationed with Simpson at one of the upper exits on to the foyer. I helped drag some of the interrupters out but I’d been clearly instructed not to leave my post.

  However, I didn’t like what I was seeing once the interrupters were outside the auditorium. Some were hurled down the stairs. Others had their heads banged repeatedly against the stone floor. Stewards were ramming fingers up their nostrils so they couldn’t easily move or breathe.

  All the stewards were armed with something — rubber piping, coshes, daggers, knuckledusters. I saw something I hadn’t seen before. Razors set in potatoes. The other thing I’d never seen before was that the stewards used razors to cut the braces or belts of the interrupters so they couldn’t fight back
because they were trying to hold their trousers up.

  I was disgusted. I intervened a good few times to pull my comrades off the ones receiving the worst beatings. The stairs grew slick with blood. Broken bodies lay huddled everywhere. And all the time, on stage, Mosley postured and grimaced, stepped forward pugnaciously and then back, fists on hips, head tilted back, bellowing his message.

  Going back on the train, the stewards took their uniforms off because they were frightened of being set on. I’d lost Simpson in the crowd in Olympia so I travelled back alone. I took mine off because I was ashamed.

  After that, decent folk ran a mile from the BUF, whilst the violence attracted all these other supporters looking for trouble.

  I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t that I hadn’t seen violence before. I’d turned a blind eye many a time to bobbies putting the boot in. But what kind of organization was I in?

  I went down to the Skylark to see if Charteris had anything to report but he wasn’t around. I hadn’t seen him in Brighton for a while.

  Then the trunk was discovered at Brighton station’s left luggage office and bedlam broke out. On 19th June I spotted Charteris hurrying along the prom. He didn’t have time to talk — couldn’t wait to get away in fact.

  ‘What does the Galloping Major have to say about Olympia?’ I said.

  Charteris was darting looks left and right.

  ‘Look, it’s doing my reputation no good being seen with a bobby in public.’

  ‘What does he say?’ I insisted.

  ‘I haven’t seen him for ages. That was just, you know. .’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I wasn’t there. Sounds like some Reds got what was coming to them.’

  ‘Are you down here for long?’

  ‘Two or three weeks,’ he said. ‘I’m staying with Jack Notyre.’

  The next couple of weeks were hectic as we dealt with the avalanche of information coming our way. The next time I saw Charteris, he was at least a witness and possibly an accomplice in the second Brighton Trunk Murder.