Headline Murder

by Peter Bartram

  “Could it?”

  I said: “This is not the best place to talk. Could we go for some supper somewhere?”

  “I don’t know that I want to eat with somebody who’s just stood me up.”

  “At least, you found a friend to watch the film with,” I said. She looked sideways at me and grinned.

  “Jealous?”

  “Curious,” I said. “An old friend?”

  “He’s a bonzer guy. A real brainbox. Student at Cambridge. Reading natural sciences.”

  “I didn’t know you’d been to Cambridge.”

  “I haven’t. He comes from round here. He’s got a summer job working in the same restaurant as me.”

  “And he just happened to be going to the film?”

  “He was behind me in the ticket queue. Coincidence, eh?”

  “Happens all the time,” I said.

  She looked at me and smiled. “You going to keep up this third-degree stuff or take me to eat. I’m starving.”

  I said: “I’m famished, too. Let’s treat ourselves and go to the Four Aces.”

  I looked back up the road. A cab was heading towards us. I put two fingers into my mouth and whistled it up. It pulled into the kerb. We both bundled into the back seat. It was the same driver that had delivered me to the Duke of York’s.

  He looked over his shoulder. “You, again,” he said. “Did you see the deceased?”

  I said: “It turns out there is life after death.”

  We had the alcove in the first-floor dining room at the Four Aces.

  Depending on your point of view, it was either a cosy or poky room in a narrow bow-fronted house in Meeting House Lane. The room was decorated with scarlet flock wallpaper.

  I ordered dressed crab and wiener schnitzel. Shirley ordered melon cocktail and coq au vin. We drank a bottle of Medoc.

  Over the first course, I told Shirley what I’d been doing on the Trumper story. She ate her melon and listened quietly.

  “Sounds to me like you’ve got yourself more tangled than a spider’s web,” she said. “And that guy Darke sounds like the funnel web in the centre.”

  “Funnel web?” I asked.

  “Aussie spider. Poisonous. Aggressive. Dangerous.”

  I drank some wine. “I guess all three could apply to Darke.”

  “Watch your arse with that guy on your case,” she said.

  “I intend to.”

  A waitress came and cleared our plates. I refilled our wine glasses.

  “There’s something else,” I said. “It’s possible that I may get a new job.”

  “On the Chronicle? I thought you liked the crime beat.”

  “I do. This would be on a national paper. The Daily Mirror.”

  “Gee,” Shirley said. “The big time.” She picked up her glass. “I guess we better drink to that.”

  “Let’s not tempt fate,” I said. “There’s competition – two other applicants.”

  “You’ll walk it. You may be a cocky bastard but I can tell that you’re a bloody good journalist.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “When does this all kick off?”

  “The interviews are on Thursday.”

  The waiter brought my wiener schnitzel and Shirley’s coq au vin.

  “If I get the job, it will mean moving to London,” I said.

  Shirley speared a mushroom with her fork. “Big city boy, eh?” She popped the mushroom into her mouth.

  “The thing is, if I move up there, will you come with me?”

  Shirley stopped chewing and looked at me. “You mean to live together?”

  “That’s what I had in mind.”

  Shirley turned back to her plate and cut into a piece of chicken. “I don’t know whether I want to settle in one place. Not yet.”

  “You’ve been in Brighton for two months.”

  “Yes, but two months is nothing. One day I’ll move on.”

  “Do you always have to move on?”

  “I’m going walkabout,” she said.

  “I thought walkabouts were for aborigines,” I said.

  “Don’t knock it,” she said. “Walkabout is a journey in more ways than one.”

  “In what ways?”

  “I don’t just mean a physical journey. It’s not about seeing Brighton Pier and Buckingham Palace or the Eiffel Tower – although I’d love to go up that.”

  “So what journey?”

  “Well, for the aborigines it’s a spiritual journey – reconnecting with the stories of their ancestors. Learning about their history so they can pass it on to the next generation. It’s about finding out who they are.”

  “And that’s what your travels are for you?”

  “I need to know what I want from life,” she said.

  She picked up her glass and drank some wine.

  “What I’m saying is: I guess I don’t know whether I’m ready to come to London with you.” She put down her glass. “I need to think about it some more.”

  “So the answer is out there somewhere,” I said.

  “Yeah, somewhere. I think. I hope.”

  I arrived back at my flat in Regency Square just before midnight.

  The supper with Shirley hadn’t been quite the success I’d intended. But after we’d discussed our futures, we ordered another bottle of wine and started talking about the film. Shirley was working tomorrow evening but we’d agreed to meet again in two days. And I’d sworn on the Four Aces menu that I wouldn’t stand her up a second time.

  I walked up the stairs to the front door and inserted my key silently into the lock, opened the door and crept in. I didn’t make it as far as the stairs before the Widow Gribble was out of her room.

  She was wearing a dressing gown of floral flannelette that came down to her ankles and fluffy pink slippers. She’d put her hair in curlers.

  “Mr Crampton, you’re in,” she said.

  “Keenly observed,” I said.

  “I’ve been waiting up for you.”

  “No need. I’ve been putting myself to bed for years now.”

  The Widow came as close as she ever did to looking embarrassed.

  “I wasn’t planning to put you to bed.”

  “Then what did you want?”

  “I was wondering whether you could spare a minute or two.”

  “Can’t it wait until morning? I’m tired.”

  “It is very urgent,” she said.

  “Very well.”

  She led the way into her parlour, a room stuffed with too much furniture. There were little lace doilies on the table and antimacassars on the backs of the chairs. The place smelt of mothballs.

  “I’ve had some dreadful news,” she said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s about the vacant house two doors down.”

  “The one that belonged to the batty old woman?”

  “I believe Mrs Saunders was a trifle eccentric.”

  “What about it?”

  “I was told this afternoon that it’s about to be sold.”

  I felt my heart beat faster. I knew what she was going to say even before she said it.

  “It’s being bought by that dreadful Septimus Darke. You know what he does, Mr Crampton. He ruins neighbourhoods. This house is the only thing I have. If I’m forced out I don’t know what I shall do…”

  She slumped into a chair. Her hands were shaking. I’d never noticed before that she had such delicate fingers.

  “I don’t know where to turn. But you’re on the Chronicle. Surely you can expose this dreadful man. Drive him out of town. Mr Crampton, somebody must do something. Please, you must try. Say you will.”

  I’d never seen the Widow in such a state. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. Her nose was running.

  Even the Widow didn’t deserve what Darke had in store for the square. I felt a slow anger burning inside. This was no coincidence. Darke knew where I lived and this was a deliberate attempt to intimidate me. And others would suffer as a
result.

  I said: “It’s late, Mrs Gribble. Leave it with me and I’ll see what I can do about it in the morning. Don’t worry. Everything will be all right in the end.”

  I left the Widow dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief and went upstairs to my room. If Darke was the buyer, I had no doubt who’d be the estate agent arranging the sale. Darke and Cross had decided to play rough.

  I’d promised the Widow that everything would be all right. But now I wasn’t at all sure that it would be.

  Chapter 10

  I spent a restless night.

  The weather had turned warmer again. My bedroom was hot, and the bed lumpier than ever. I couldn’t stop thinking about the Trumper case. About Cross and Darke. And about what Shirley had said in the restaurant. I suppose I’d never really faced up to the fact that one day she’d be moving on. I guess I’d harboured the unspoken hope that she might choose not to continue her round-the-world trip and settle in Brighton. But, from what Shirley had said, that didn’t seem likely.

  And now I had a hysterical Widow Gribble to deal with.

  At around four, I drifted into a light sleep. I dreamt that I’d moved into a new flat with the Widow Gribble and that Shirley was our landlady. A removal van with our furniture arrived outside the flat and the men started to unload – Darke and Cross carrying in tables and chairs. And, finally, an open coffin with Trumper lying dead inside.

  I awoke in a sweat. I decided there was no point trying to sleep. I showered and dressed and went for a long hike along the seafront as far as Black Rock. The walk cleared my mind and helped me separate the reality of my investigation from the nightmare of the night.

  On the way back, I called into Marcello’s for breakfast. I ordered a bacon sandwich with brown sauce and a coffee. The place was empty but Marcello was as cheerful as ever.

  “Dio mio! You look terrible.”

  “Bad night,” I said.

  “Then you must drink the special of Marcello, a caffè corretto.”

  “Why not?” I said.

  He reached behind the counter for a bottle of grappa and poured a good slug into my coffee.

  I took my coffee and sandwich to the window seat. On the other side of Madeira Drive I could see the Krazy Kat. Dried seaweed was drifting across the golf course in the breeze. Seagulls had splattered the ticket-kiosk window. The place looked even more desolate than usual. I wondered what had kept Trumper at the place for so many years. No doubt, it was his life.

  I wondered whether it had also become the cause of his death.

  My first call of the morning was at Brighton Police Station.

  The daily press briefing started at nine sharp. I was absorbed in the Trumper case, but I couldn’t afford to ignore Brighton’s other crime stories. If there were any in the silly season.

  I walked through the cop-shop’s front door and ran straight into Jim Houghton.

  “So, the generous benefactor from the Chronicle pays us a visit,” he said. “Are you giving more alms to the poor today?”

  He was grinning but there was suspicion lurking behind those shrewd eyes.

  “Morning, Jim,” I said. “You’ve lost me already.”

  “Just wondering whether you could spare ten bob for me to have lunch in The Cricketers.”

  “So Nick told you that I missed my lunch date with him?”

  “Reckons you stood him up deliberately.”

  “Couldn’t be helped I’m afraid. Checked in with the office and found they needed me for an urgent rewrite on a story for the mid-afternoon edition.”

  “Since when were you a rewrite man? Don’t you have subs at the Chronicle?” Jim said.

  “Of course, we have subs. But sometimes a story needs the master’s touch.”

  We headed down the corridor towards the briefing room. Entered the room and sat down. A uniformed copper asked if we’d like tea. We shook our heads. There was only one thing worse than the cop-shop’s tea – and that was its coffee.

  “What I can’t understand is what you were doing at the Planning Committee,” said Houghton. “It’s not your usual beat.”

  “I like to see the bigger picture sometimes,” I said.

  “The only bigger picture you’re interested in is a hundred and forty-four point headline instead of seventy-two points.”

  “It pays to understand all aspects the of the town’s life when you’re covering crime, Jim. You should try it some time.”

  “Don’t you lecture me on what I should and shouldn’t try. I was covering crime in this town when you were still wetting your trousers.”

  “Well, we all have our own ways of approaching things.” I said. “By the way, I thought I caught a glimpse of one of your younger lads yesterday afternoon. Trying to remember his name – something to do with a bird. Peregrine, that’s it.”

  “That’ll be young Foulkes-Hartington-Smythe,” Houghton said. “What about him?”

  “If my nature was as suspicious as yours, I could have thought he was following me.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “But I must have been imagining it.”

  “You always did have an overactive imagination,” Houghton said.

  “I’ll have to keep an eye out over the next few days in case any other Argus reporters end up on my tail.”

  “Our hacks have got better things to do that follow you around.”

  “I certainly hope so, Jim,” I said.

  We sat in silence for a moment waiting for Sergeant Fairbrother to come in and start the press briefing. Jim opened his notebook and wrote something in Pitman’s. I glanced sideways to see if I could read it, but Jim’s shorthand outlines had taken on a shape of their own over the years and I couldn’t make it out.

  He closed his notebook and turned to me. “You may think you’re clever, but I’ve scooped you in the past and I’ll scoop you in the future.”

  “I agree with all three propositions in that sentence,” I said.

  “Arrogant bastard,” he said.

  I didn’t reply to that because the door opened and Sergeant Fairbrother came in. He didn’t look like a man about to impart headline news.

  After the press briefing, I headed for the Chronicle offices.

  On the way, I called at the bakers and bought the box of chocolate éclairs I’d promised the Clipping Cousins the previous evening.

  The girl behind the counter had hazel eyes and a lot of mascara. She was wearing a pinafore with blue and white stripes.

  I said: “Is the cream in the éclairs real?”

  She said: “Of course it’s real. What do you think it is? A figment of your imagination.”

  I said: “I meant is it artificial?”

  She said: “That’s right, it’s artificial.”

  “It can’t be real and artificial.”

  “Of course, it can. It’s real artificial cream.”

  She handed me the box with the éclairs and I left.

  Back at the office, a note on my desk in Figgis’s handwriting said: My office the instant you get in.

  I didn’t like the tone of that one little bit. I walked round to his office, knocked on the door and went in before he could shout “enter”.

  He looked up from some copy he was headlining and said: “It’s you.”

  I said: “You can still see the other side of the room without your glasses then.”

  He said: “I’m not in the mood for any of your cracks this morning. Sit down.”

  I sat.

  Figgis finished his headline and put his glasses on. He reached for his ciggies and lit up.

  He said: “I’ve had His Holiness down here this morning.”

  “An actual visitation?”

  “Yes, slumming it with the workers. The fact is he’s had Councillor Derek Cross bending his ear on the dog and bone.”

  “That fine servant of the people.”

  “I don’t like him any more than you. But, apparently, His Holiness plays the odd round of golf with him up at the Dyk
e Golf Club.”

  “All matey on the nineteenth, are they?”

  “Quite possibly. What you need to know is that Cross has complained to Pope that you’re harassing him. I’m told you actually gatecrashed a reception at the Town Hall last night.”

  “Hardly. The event was breaking up. Besides, I had documented evidence that Cross had a long-term social relationship with Septimus Darke. He’d lied to me about that in a previous interview and I needed to get his reaction.”

  I showed Figgis the cutting I’d unearthed the previous evening in the morgue.

  He looked at it and then said: “Anyway, the hard fact is this, His Holiness wants you to close this story down.”

  “What? He can’t be serious. Just as I’m getting close to cracking a major case of council corruption and tracking down a missing man?”

  Figgis held up his hand. “Hear me out. I know you’ve put a lot of effort into this story. And, by the great editor in the sky, we need something to give us a decent splash. But you can’t harass so-called respected local councillors.”

  I shrugged. “Okay. I’ll go easy on Cross for the time being.”

  “Yes, well that brings me to the other point,” Figgis said.

  “Which is?”

  “We can’t spend forever on this story. You’ve produced hardly any copy for the last couple of days…”

  “You know a big story like this needs development time.”

  “I know that. But I also need copy for the paper. And you’re not giving me any.”

  “When I’ve cracked this story you’ll have columns of copy. Pages of it.”

  “Here’s the deal. You have one more day on this story. If you haven’t turned up anything by the end of today, that’s it. Finito. The end.”

  “Give me until the end of the week.”

  Figgis stubbed out his cigarette and reached for another. “No. I had to wheedle my way round Pope to get him to agree to that. Your deadline is six o’clock this evening. I want you back in this office with some copy at that hour or you’re off the story.”

  He lit his cigarette and blew a perfect smoke ring. It held its shape and floated upwards towards the nicotine-stained ceiling.

  “You have eight hours,” he said.

  “Eight hours,” I said. “By that great editor in the sky, I’m going to need a miracle.”