I walked towards him.
He looked up as I came alongside the table and said: “Waiter, bring me some ketchup. These chips are a bit dry.”
I said: “That’s just become the least of your worries, Arnold.”
“That’s no way to speak to a paying customer.”
I said: “May I join you?”
He said: “No.”
I pulled out the chair opposite and sat down.
Trumper slammed down his knife and fork. His face was contorted with fury and, in an instant, I saw how a seemingly harmless golf man could be a two-time killer. Close up, his face seemed powerful. He had sharp eyes and a prominent chin. But the feature that stood out was his teeth. They were huge white gnashers. Like tombstones. Light glinted off them when he opened his large mouth, and they dominated his face.
He said: “Leave my table this instant or I’ll call the bosun and have you clapped in the brig.” He bared the teeth.
I said: “Hold hard, Hornblower, until you’ve heard what I’ve got to say.”
“What have you got to say that I could possibly want to hear?”
“You’ll want to hear how I know that you killed your wife Mildred twenty-two years ago.”
He twitched his neck in an irritable way as if to say “Must I?” He pushed his fish and chips away unfinished. The ship heaved and the plate slid towards the edge of the table.
He said: “That’s insulting rubbish. A man was convicted of my dear Mildred’s killing.”
“Accused, yes. But never convicted.”
“Besides, why are you raking all that up after so long?”
I leaned across the table. “Because two days ago, you went to a flat in Sokeham Street in Brighton and killed Robert Barnet, the young man whom you’d hired to help run the Krazy Kat during the summer.”
He pushed back his chair and started to rise.
“Sit down,” I said. “If you don’t, I’ll call the bosun and have you clapped in the brig.”
He said: “Who are you?”
I took out a card and slid it across the table. He picked it up and peered myopically at it. I guessed he usually wore glasses for reading.
He said: “Evening Chronicle.”
He seemed relieved. I wasn’t the police. He looked out of the window at the sea heaving and crashing against the stern.
He said: “I reckon we’re outside the three-mile limit now. International waters. Nobody can touch me.”
I said: “I wouldn’t bet on that. But I’m not the police. I’m only interested in writing a story for my paper.”
“Why should I want to talk to you?”
“Because sooner or later you’ll have to talk to somebody and it looks better from your point of view if you’ve taken the earliest opportunity to get matters off your chest.”
“Where I’m going I won’t need to talk to anybody.”
“My guess is Spain. Plenty of sunshine. Cheap booze. No extradition treaty.”
“I’ll find somewhere quiet. Nobody will ever find me.”
I said: “Not the English police, perhaps. Most of them couldn’t find the back of their hand even if they had a magnifying glass in the other one. But journalists will track you down and make your life a misery.”
He grimaced and the teeth flashed. He looked like a man auditioning for a vampire movie.
“Some hope,” he said.
I said: “I found you – and you haven’t even got to Spain yet.”
“I won’t speak to them – and I won’t speak to you.”
“Makes no difference. When they find you, they’ll camp outside your house. They’ll doorstep you and you won’t be able to come or go without hearing their shouted questions or having your picture taken.”
“The local police will see them off.”
“You wish. When the local rozzers realise that they’re sitting on top of a double murderer they won’t want to know you. Neither will the locals who, incidentally, will also find themselves being interviewed at length by the hacks. You’ll have no choice but to move on. Until they find you again. How many times can you move, Arnold, before you have to give up.”
“It won’t be like that. I’ve got money,” he said.
“I suspect the money you’ve got is small change compared with what national newspapers can throw at this story. I wouldn’t mind betting that even the Chronicle will finance a trip to the Costas so that I can join the fun in hunting you down.”
The ferry yawed and spray splashed against the restaurant windows.
“I need a drink,” Trumper said.
“I’ll join you.”
I signalled for a waiter and ordered the drinks. Trumper had a large whisky. I stuck to my usual gin and tonic. We said nothing while we waited for the drinks to arrive. Trumper’s head had sunk on to his chest. He looked like a man in shock. But he didn’t look like a man about to give up. What most concerned me was that he didn’t look like a man about to talk. And unless he did, I would have no story. I’d have lost everything. Shirley. The Daily Mirror job. My place on the Chronicle. I had to get Trumper to talk.
Our drinks arrived. Trumper attacked his like a desert traveller who’s reached an oasis. He put down his glass. It slid across the table as a huge wave broke over the bows.
He said: “You’ll get nothing out of me. So why don’t you bugger off?”
The teeth flashed another warning: Go away or I’ll bite you.
“Not until I know what happened at the Krazy Kat twenty-two years ago and in Robert Barnet’s flat two days ago.”
“You’ll never know.”
I said: “I think I will.”
He lounged back in his chair and tossed his head.
“As it happens, I already know most of what happened,” I said. “So you’re going to sit there and listen while I tell you. And then you’re going to fill in the blanks.”
He laughed. “This I’ve got to hear.”
Chapter 20
“Twenty-two years of deceit and deception started to unravel when Septimus Darke called on you,” I said.
Trumper closed his eyes. But I knew he was listening. He’d bared those teeth. Outside, the storm battered the ferry. Waves smashed over the bows. Rain thrashed at the windows. Wind roared and whistled through rigging. The ship heaved and yawed in the heavy swell.
I said: “Darke made you a very generous offer for the Krazy Kat but you didn’t want to sell. I suspect you already knew Darke’s reputation and didn’t fancy the prospect of doing business with him. So you turned down his offer. But you hadn’t realised that when Darke wants to buy, he doesn’t care whether the vendor wants to sell. So he returned and made threats – threats which you wisely decided to take seriously.”
Trumper opened his eyes. “Darke doesn’t frighten me.”
“I think he does,” I said. “Robert Barnet told me when I visited him at the Krazy Kat, that he’d overheard your argument with Darke. He said you’d seemed cowed by him.”
“Nosy little eavesdropper.”
I said: “But Darke wasn’t only making his usual crude threats of violence, he was also playing a cleverer game. He’d bribed Councillor Derek Cross to tell you that the council might be willing to issue a compulsory purchase order if you failed to sell voluntarily.”
“Cross is a bag of wind,” Trumper said. “Like you.”
I ignored the insult and said: “With Darke and Cross on your case – and Darke presenting a real threat – you decided the days of the Krazy Kat were numbered. You instructed Barnet to throw all the rubbish out of the storeroom and you went into hiding at your sister’s house. I’ve seen your papers there and it looks to me as though you’ve been in the process of liquidating your assets so that you’d have as much cash as possible for the future.”
I had Trumper’s attention now. He leant forward snarling. “You’ve been at Dorothy’s house – going through my private things,” he said. “I’ll have the law on you.”
“I think not. And, any
way, how do you think I discovered you were on this ferry? You left the invoice for your ticket behind.”
The ship heaved. Furniture slid across the room. Glasses crashed to the floor. I clung onto my G&T.
I said: “But you’d made a mistake leaving Barnet behind at the Krazy Kat. Because instead of throwing all the old boxes out as you’d instructed, he started to rummage through them.”
“Interfering little toe-rag.”
“Not a nice way to describe a dead employee.”
“Wish I’d never hired him.”
I said: “Perhaps not. Because, as a law student, Barnet had a sharp mind. He discovered the letters Mildred had written to you all those years ago. I’ve often wondered why you kept them. But some people are just natural hoarders. And, perhaps, with the pressures of wartime, you’d forgotten you still had them. You’d also kept all those old Evening Chronicles. One of them contained a picture of Reggie Farnsworth going off to war – the day before Mildred wrote her last letter to you.”
“That was all private,” Trumper complained.
“And, no doubt, you hoped it would stay that way. But Barnet worked out for himself that Reggie Farnsworth couldn’t have killed Mildred because he’d left for France the day before the date on her last note to you. And he also realised that you had a motive for killing Mildred because she wanted the money for her half share in the Krazy Kat.”
“Doesn’t mean I did kill her,” Trumper said.
“No, it doesn’t, but I think you did. And I think Barnet thought you did which is why he blackmailed you. He’d worked out where you were staying from information he’d also found in the boxes. And I’m not saying he played the crude blackmailer. More likely, he suggested you might like to make a contribution to his student expenses in return for help in retrieving some embarrassing documents. Something like that. Am I right?”
Trumper shrugged.
I said: “So I am right. In any event, you decided that you couldn’t afford to pay off Barnet without admitting your guilt. And being a wily business type, you’d also be aware that black-mailers are greedy. They always come back for more. And, in Barnet’s case, you were probably right. He’d Xeroxed Mildred’s letters. I found the copies at the Krazy Kat. So you told Barnet that you would come to his flat to pay him off. In reality, you intended to kill him. You went to his flat, hit him with something and, probably, while he was unconscious, strangled him.”
Trumper relaxed. “Is that it?” he said. “Even your readers will realise that’s fantasy. You’ll never be able to print that because you can’t prove any of it.”
“I’ve got the copies of Mildred’s letters and a note from you to Barnet saying that you’ll come to his flat.”
“A court would laugh at that. The fact is, Crampton, you’ve got nothing you can use against me. You’re finished. You’ve got no story and, by the time I’ve finished with you, you’ll have no career.”
Trumper’s eyes shone with triumph. The teeth gleamed malevolently.
He said: “Farnsworth was accused of Mildred’s killing and that was good enough for the police then. They never found her body, so there’s no way the police now would ever change their mind. And if I didn’t kill Mildred, I’d have no reason to kill Barnet.”
He was right. The evidence I had was circumstantial. Without new information or the discovery of Mildred’s body, it would be impossible to re-open the case. Which meant that I would have no story. And no job. Figgis would fire me for sure when he heard about this.
The ship heaved again and for the first time I felt queasy. My mouth was as dry as old leather. I’d drunk all my G&T but the large wedge of lemon was left in the bottom of the glass. I needed to suck on it to get some moisture. I reached into the glass and pulled out the lemon. The skin of the lemon felt wet and slimy. As it slipped through my fingers, a synapse in my brain triggered a memory. I’d felt the same sensation not long ago.
Wet and slimy.
I’d held something wet and slimy recently. But where?
Another synapse in my brain fired. I knew where.
When playing golf with Barnet at the Krazy Kat. And retrieving the snail from the eighteenth hole. What had Barnet said? “That hole’s always getting flooded.”
Now my mind was firing like a nuclear power plant. And the clues came flooding back. The surveyor’s plan of the Krazy Kat that Barnet had shown me on my second visit. I pictured it in my mind. There was something wrong. On the course, all the holes were in the place they were shown on the surveyor’s plan. Except the eighteenth.
Something Mary Farnsworth had said in Palmeira Square: “I recall somebody telling me that after Mr Trumper had fired my father, he had finished the work himself.” And then there was the picture in the Chronicle which I’d seen when I’d visited the Krazy Kat earlier in the day. The copy that carried the story of Mildred’s death. The picture of the Krazy Kat showed the place hidden from public view by the hessian screens for the building work.
I said: “I think I may be keeping my job after all.”
Trumper laughed. “You wish.”
“Let me tell you another story. It’s about the final night Mildred came to see you at the Krazy Kat. After you’d told her in a letter that you were going to give her five hundred pounds for her share of the property.”
“I never said that.”
“In her letter to you, Mildred claims you did. That’s good enough for me – and I expect for the police. She arrived at the Krazy Kat after it had closed. You were alone there. Mildred had – how shall I put it? – a colourful turn of phrase. She didn’t just want the money, she wanted to insult and humiliate you as well. But she went too far and you killed her. For all I know, the same way as you killed Barnet, with a heavy blow to disable her and then by strangling. I’m prepared to believe that it was a flash of temper that went too far. Whatever the explanation, there was Mildred dead on the floor. You had to dispose of her body. You could hardly transport it through the streets of Brighton. So you dug a pit behind the hessian screens and buried her under the eighteenth hole. Mary Farnsworth told me her father had almost finished the work. I’m betting that was the only hole he hadn’t completed. And I reckon that you dug that hole in a panic without once consulting the surveyors’ plans to find where it should have been.”
Trumper’s face was as white as his teeth. He grasped his stomach as though in pain. He retched and grey slime appeared at the corner of his mouth. He wiped it away on his sleeve.
“I feel sick,” he moaned.
I said: “And then you compounded your crime with another despicable act. You threw suspicion on Reggie Farnsworth as Mildred’s murderer.”
“He’d been having his way with her. He deserved to pay,” Trumper said.
“But his wife and daughter didn’t. Mary Farnsworth has had to live with the knowledge that people believe her father was a murderer.”
“That was Farnsworth’s fault. He should have thought about the consequences before dipping his wick where he shouldn’t.”
I said: “I know now why Cross’s letter about the compulsory purchase order unsettled you so much. You reckoned you might be able to hold off Darke, but if the council made it official, the Krazy Kat would certainly be sold for development. And Mildred’s body would be discovered when the diggers moved in.”
Trumper’s face sagged.
He said: “It was an accident. I told her I couldn’t afford to give her the five hundred pounds. I offered her fifty instead. She screamed abuse and rushed at me with those flashing nails of hers. I picked up one of the golf clubs and hit her. I only meant to defend myself but I caught her on the neck. Much harder than I meant. She was dead as soon as she hit the floor.”
“And so, instead of reporting the incident, giving her a decent burial, you dumped her in a hole on the golf course and filled it in.”
“What could I do? I risked losing everything.”
“And, then, to compound your original crime, you killed Robert Barn
et,” I said.
“That was self-defence. I swear it. He was blackmailing me. I gave him the money but he wouldn’t hand over the letters. He wanted more. He was greedy. I tried to snatch the letters from him. They were rightfully mine. But he punched me. I snatched a beer bottle and hit him. He went down but he was still breathing. I knew then I had to finish him.”
“And then you tried to throw suspicion for your crime on Darke by leaving one of his business cards behind.”
“I knew I had to make the police think somebody else had done it or I would never live another day in peace.”
“But you won’t live in peace,” I said. “I’m going to see the captain now. When I’ve told him the story, he will hold you on the ferry and return you to England.”
“He can’t do that. We’re in international waters. British law doesn’t apply here.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. You’re on a British ship and marine law applies.”
Trumper leapt up just as a monster wave hit the side of the ship. He shoved the table towards me and my chair fell backwards. I grabbed at the table, but it was wet and my hands slipped off. The whole ship lurched on one side. I tumbled backwards. The back of my head slammed into the edge of the next table. And blackness closed around me.
When I came to, I was relieved to find that I wasn’t waiting outside the Pearly Gates. There was no sign of St Peter ticking off my misdemeanours in the ledger of life. No angel with shiny wings waited to show me to my own cloud.
Instead, a waiter was bending over me breathing garlic breath into my face and asking whether I was all right.
I moved my head. It didn’t fall off. I felt behind my neck. It was tender and there would be an ugly bruise later.
The ship yawed as the gale grew stronger and the memories of the last minutes with Trumper flooded back. The waiter helped me to my feet. I swayed a bit at first but didn’t fall down again. I scanned the room in a couple of seconds. There was no sign of Trumper.
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