by Lynne Truss
Peter Dupont.
Who he? Where does he work? Is he weedy? If so, why?
Uncle Ken’s headless torso in suitcase!
This last he underlined emphatically (skilfully employing the shift key) and tapped the number six so hard – and so many times – that even Sergeant Brunswick took notice.
‘Oh, come on, son,’ he said. ‘What’s so important you can’t stop for a cup of tea?’
Twitten took a deep breath. ‘Just a second, sir!’ he said. ‘Please, sir!’ His train of thought had almost vanished, but he rescued it.
Weedy Pete said Deirdre could trust Hogeland/Hoagland? Who he?
Blacksmith? Blackgang? Blackmore!
Mrs Groynes plonked a cup of tea on his desk. ‘I brought you one anyway, dear,’ she said, peering over his shoulder. He took a deep breath. He had one last thing to set down:
DON’T FORGET: 9 o’clock at coach station in Pool Valley.
And then he ripped the sheet from the typewriter and folded it before she could see too much of it.
He smiled up at her in a kind of triumph. ‘Lovely day, Mrs G,’ he said. ‘Did you say something about a fig roll?’
Out on the seafront, the two Brighton Belles who had so easily resisted the sales pitch of Lord Melamine, 5th Marquess of Colchester, paraded past the entrance to the West Pier, then took the steps down to the beach.
Their daily briefing had instructed them today to encourage the public, in the gentlest possible fashion, to partake of fairground activities and other entertainments, because in fine conditions such as these, visitors tended to frolic in the sea, sunbathe on the shingly beach and build sandcastles (when the tide was sufficiently far out to uncover the necessary raw material) – all of which pastimes profited the grasping town of Brighton precisely nothing.
‘Good morning!’ Phyllis and Adelaide called from the steps, generally, to the holiday-makers below in their deck-chairs. ‘Have you heard about the new roller-coaster on the Palace Pier?’ The Belles had been trained to wave and smile in the style of the young monarch; the man from Brighton Council had looked very funny when he demonstrated it the first time, but it seemed to work. ‘Hello! Good morning! Can we help you with anything?’
Reaching the level of the beach, they paused and absorbed the scene. Families had erected colourful stripy wind-breaks to nestle behind and eat their home-made shrimp-paste sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs, and drink their flasks of tea; a Punch & Judy man was setting up his booth, whacking wooden posts into the shingle with a large rock and muttering a number of unrepeatable swear-words to himself in a Greek accent; a limping man in a doorman’s uniform, with a row of shiny medals on his chest, clutched a parcel and headed for the steps; donkeys with names like ‘Flora’ and ‘Ermintrude’ poker-worked on to their bridles stood patiently while frightened toddlers were placed on their backs (and sometimes smartly lifted off again); and under one of the arches, a buck-toothed teenaged girl in dazzling white ankle-socks arranged brightly coloured plastic windmills in a red metal pail.
The Belles looked so sophisticated, it was hard to believe they weren’t much older than the buck-toothed girl. But they were scarcely out of their teens. When they talked amongst themselves, the subject was likely to be make-up, or boys, or the price of nylons, or their plans for dancing the night away with a friend of Daddy’s who’d invited them to dinner at the tennis club.
Of the six girls, Adelaide was the one who seemed most worldly, and she was also the funny one: she was apt to reduce her regular partner Phyllis to unstoppable giggles. And in fact they were just laughing at something Adelaide had said (about the self-styled Marquess of Colchester taking his name from a famous pub) when a small sunburned boy in sky-blue knitted swimming trunks ran up to them and pulled at Adelaide’s sleeve.
He seemed distressed, and it wasn’t just from the way his damp woollen costume was bagging to his knobbly knees, or from the painful scorching of his bony shoulders.
‘Miss!’ he said. ‘You’ve got to come, miss! There’s a man!’
‘What sort of man?’ said Adelaide, with a ready-for-anything smile. She was always having to put up with little japes on the beach – daddies buried in sand; being offered seaweed sandwiches; small translucent crabs being dropped down her neck.
The boy pulled a face. ‘Well, miss. He looks to me like a dead one.’
‘What?’ she blurted. She tried to recover, but failed. ‘I mean, what?’
Adelaide and Phyllis looked around, and saw that – alarmingly – they were surrounded by a crowd of people in dark glasses and colourful straw sombreros, who had jumped up from their deck-chairs and were now grasping each other by the arm, or holding their hands to their faces in shock.
Back at the station, there was now a bit of an atmosphere between himself and Mrs Groynes, but Twitten refused to feel bad about it. Keeping police intelligence from this wicked woman was a highly reasonable precaution. He had no intention of ever again speaking in front of her about the details of a case. He had no intention, either, of letting her see anything. He put the folded piece of paper in his tunic pocket and pointedly buttoned it.
Part of Twitten’s daily torment, however, was that he could not prevent other people from unwittingly sharing the most delicate information with this most brazen of criminals in their midst. Just last week Brunswick had come in and announced, delightedly, ‘Guess what I heard, son! The Albion Bank in North Street is taking delivery of its new safe next Wednesday, but they’ve already removed the old one, so for the time being all the deposits will be kept in flaming sacks in the basement! And their back gate in the alley’s a disgrace!’
Twitten had been fascinated by the way Mrs Groynes received this news. She seemed not to react at all. But then, having made everyone a quick cup of tea, she reached for her coat and headscarf.
‘Just popping out, dears. We’re in need of some Handy Andy.’
‘Okey-dokey, Mrs Groynes,’ said Brunswick, distractedly, still chuckling at the shocking security arrangements of a bank known to deal in unusually large sums on summer weekdays.
Pausing at the door, she said, ‘Did you say the Albion Bank, dear?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Did you say the Albion Bank just now? The one in North Street?’
‘That’s right,’ he laughed. ‘But don’t tell anyone!’
When she came back later, she seemed to have forgotten the Handy Andy, but brought festive coconut ice wrapped in greaseproof paper, to the joy of all. And that very night, the Albion Bank in North Street was cleared out by a professional gang, gaining entry by means of the disgraceful back gate in the alley.
But now Mrs Groynes was about to hear some news that, to Twitten’s surprise, unsettled her so badly that he almost felt sorry for her.
Brunswick looked up from his Police Gazette. ‘It says here,’ he said, ‘that Wall-Eye Joe is back to his tricks, and that they’re expecting him to turn up on the South Coast.’
‘What?’ she said, sharply, almost dropping the tray she was holding. The return of Wall-Eye Joe to business (which meant nothing to Twitten) was evidently a massive headline so far as she was concerned.
‘Who are you talking about, sir?’ said Twitten.
‘Proper name Joseph Marriott,’ said Brunswick.
‘But known to all as Wall-Eye,’ chipped in Mrs Groynes – this humble, uneducated charwoman with her miraculously exhaustive knowledge of crime and criminals. ‘He’s a hardened con man, dear,’ she said. ‘One of the hardest. And bleeding notorious.’
There was an edge to her voice that Twitten recognised but at first couldn’t place. When had he heard that flinty tone before? With a shudder, he remembered. He’d last heard it when they were alone together in London, when he had first denounced her as a villain, and she had threatened to kill him.
Turning to Brunswick, she said, as lightly as she could, ‘But I thought Wall-Eye had gone away, dear. Last I heard he was doing a tray on the cave-grinder.’
Brunswick looked blank.
‘She means three months’ hard labour, sir,’ Twitten explained.
‘Oh.’
Twitten watched as a ghost of a question crossed Brunswick’s mind, but (as usual) didn’t settle.
‘Well, that’s right, Mrs G,’ he said. ‘But he’s been out for a month or more.’
Twitten was still on the back foot, information-wise. ‘What does he do, though, sir?’ he asked. ‘Don’t con men just swindle people?’
‘Well, you might say this one goes a little bit further than that,’ said Mrs Groynes, furiously picking up a bit of knitting and sitting down with it. She gestured to Brunswick to tell the story, and then, before he could begin: ‘This one’s like Neville bleeding Heath crossed with George Joseph bleeding Smith!’
‘Oh, steady on, Mrs G.’ Brunswick turned to Twitten. ‘As far as I know, the worst one was when he and a female confederate set up a phoney dating-agency business, and targeted women with a bit of money. Is that the case you’re thinking of, Mrs G?’
‘Yes, it bleeding is!’ she said with passion. ‘And they didn’t just target them, they murdered them, Sergeant. They both should have swung. It was a travesty.’
‘No bodies were ever found, Mrs G. So you can’t even say it was murder.’
‘Pah!’ she said, angrily.
‘They probably used acid,’ explained Brunswick, grimly.
Although the name had meant nothing to him, Twitten remembered the story. There had been a lot of coverage in the papers. Luckily, friends of the various missing women had come forward with details of how the con was managed, and as a consequence this Joseph Marriott and the female partner had been arrested and charged.
And as Twitten recalled, the basic ‘trick’ had been quite clever. It involved an unfinished house in the country, near London. The phoney dating-agency partner – an attractive woman ostensibly working from a second-floor office in Regent Street – would interview well-to-do lonely women (known in the trade as ‘marks’) and fix them up with a widower – always the same widower, of course, with a distinctive squint, but a plausible manner.
‘I miss my wife so badly,’ he would tell each mark, pathetically. ‘Perhaps I’m not ready. But you seem so lovely, my dear. I have but one request. Please don’t mention my existence to anyone, I’m so shy!’
Having thus engaged the woman’s interest (but luckily not succeeded in stopping her confiding in her closest friends), he would court her expensively, until her head was completely turned. Then he would make his move. He would allow her to glimpse a photograph of an unfinished house, and reluctantly, he would tell her about it.
‘But that house is my problem, my dear, not yours!’ he would say, explaining (but only reluctantly, when pressed) that he needed several thousand pounds to complete the building work. Within a couple of weeks, the mark would usually stump up the money, and then vanish from the face of the earth.
Friends might get a postcard from Aviemore, or Oban, but then the trail would go cold.
‘How many women fell for it?’ Twitten asked.
‘They reckon at least half a dozen,’ said Brunswick. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about. Wall-Eye Joe and the skirt were tried for it at the Old Bailey, but there was no physical evidence of foul play, you see, only of obtaining money under false pretences. Without the bodies there wasn’t enough to convict on the murder charge, so they got off scot-free. It wasn’t the legal system’s finest hour.’
‘But didn’t you just say that he was recently in prison, sir?’
Brunswick shrugged. ‘That’s right. But that was for something else. He doesn’t always get away with it, but nothing will stop him trying again – new place, new MO, new mugs. He’s a regular menace, that man.’
Mrs Groynes, still knitting, shook her head. ‘The thing is, dear,’ she said, bitterly, ‘there are just so many gullible people in the world. To someone like Wall-Eye Joe, do you know what the world looks like? Full of mugs, dear. Full of bleeding stupid mugs.’
Brunswick pulled a face in regretful agreement, while Twitten looked at Mrs Groynes with a mixture of astonishment, curiosity, hatred, mortal fear and sincere admiration. What gall to be angry about a man seeing the world as full of mugs, when it was precisely how she saw the world herself. But why was she so worked up about this? Why was she so adamant that Wall-Eye Joe and his accomplice should have hanged for their crimes?
Mid-morning in Grenville Street, and lounge singer Dickie George was sitting at the piano of the Black Cat night club, idly picking out the tune to ‘Melancholy Baby’.
Dickie was not a cheery soul at the best of times. Finding himself up and about at half-past ten in the morning made him no happier. His ulcer burned; his hips ached; his bottom set of teeth wouldn’t quite settle on his gums. On top of which, he could hardly keep his eyes open. Last night the Black Cat had stayed open (illegally) until around three-thirty a.m., and he had crooned ballads until the bitter end – ‘For All We Know’, ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’, ‘It Had to Be You’ – until the last, hateful, inebriated couple stumbling round the dance-floor realised they were seeing double and finally admitted it was time to call it a night.
Dickie always had mixed feelings when the night was officially over and the cocky Frank Benson hopped on to the stage to announce to a virtually empty room, ‘That’s all, folks. Let’s hear it for Dickie George and the Black Cat Quartet!’
True, it was a relief that it was over, but at the same time, it was a source of sadness that yet again the evening had passed without igniting in any way; yet again, he’d had only the merest glimpse of the teenaged girl who had captured his tired old heart. He and the band were expected to wait onstage, manfully stifling yawns, while those last dishevelled punters drunkenly searched for lost ear-rings and tried to cram high heels back on, before they handed over fistfuls of cash without counting it properly, and finally left the premises.
At that point, Ma Benson would usually appear from her office and turn on the house lights (the worst moment of all), saying in a bored voice, ‘Good job, Dickie.’ Then, while her large sons Frank and Bruce started stacking chairs on tables, she would accompany Dickie and the musicians to the side door, let them out into the dingy alley, and then lock and bolt the door again from the inside.
None of the guys ever wanted a nightcap, for reasons Dickie respected: like him, they’d been in the business too long to think of this lousy job as a lifestyle choice. Across the road, at his modest digs on the top floor, he would open the sash-window to the night air, take a few calming breaths and then quickly undress – shiny tail-coat, bow-tie, braces, shirt and corset – and furiously apply a novelty long-handled back-scratcher to his itching skin, groaning aloud as he did so. Such was his unlovely bedtime routine. After popping his dentures in a glass of water and gargling with TCP (to preserve the pipes), he would sink gratefully into his creaky single cot, with the idea of not rising again until at least two o’clock in the afternoon.
But last night had been different. When he got back to his room, he’d found a note pushed under the door. And as a result, here he was, virtually at the crack of dawn, after just five hours’ uneven sleep. Young Deirdre Benson – a girl to whom a jaded, overweight band-singer such as himself could aspire to be only a friend and confidant – was excitedly asking for his help in a romantic matter, and had thoughtlessly named this ungodly hour for the meeting. But he could not deny her. He would do anything for Deirdre. She was the light in his darkness, and when he sang ‘Embraceable You’ each night with genuine tears of longing in his eyes, it was Deirdre he was thinking of.
It wasn’t wise to meet like this inside the club – when Deirdre’s thuggish older brothers might be awake and listening in the shadows; when her thuggish mother might appear at any moment with a blackjack. Ma Benson was a terrifying woman, all right: this was his third decade as a singer, and he’d never worked in a joint as tainted as this before, where there were whispers of uncle-murdering and dis
memberment. But on the other hand, he was too tired to care; too out of love with life, especially now that young Deirdre seemed to be planning to run away.
Sitting at the piano, while the girl made him a wake-up cup of Camp Coffee (which would be disgusting), he picked out more notes to his favourite song from the musical Pal Joey. Could he write a book about Deirdre, if they asked him? He was just beginning to think that he could, actually, when he felt a crack on the back of his head, and everything went dark.
‘Here, talking of mugs,’ Mrs Groynes carried on, in a hushed voice, ‘did you know the inspector fell for that spaghetti-crop hoax on that BBC Panorama?’
She was evidently hoping to turn the conversation away from Wall-Eye Joe, aware that she might have given too much away about her feelings. And like most of her ruses, it worked. Even Twitten was momentarily diverted from the scent. Inspector Steine had fallen for the April Fool’s Day spaghetti-crop hoax on Panorama? What on earth could be more interesting than that?
‘What? No!’ said a delighted Twitten, his voice lowered. ‘But it was so obviously a joke, Mrs G!’
Mrs Groynes pulled a face and leaned forward. ‘I only just found out the other day when I was sorting through his bits in that precious locked drawer of his, where he keeps his memoir and whatnot, and the letters to his horrible old mum that he isn’t brave enough to send. Yes, he only went and got a personal ticking-off from the Director General of the BBC himself!’
Brunswick squirmed. ‘If it was in a locked drawer, Mrs G … ?’ he said, gently.
‘Oh, pooh, dear,’ Mrs Groynes rushed to reassure him. ‘That drawer was wide open when I looked in it!’ (Which was technically true, but only because she had opened it with the aid of specialist tools.)
They all looked at Inspector Steine’s closed door, on the other side of which he was being very quiet. Matrimonial law as applied to criminal prosecution was predictably turning out to be a bit of an unwieldy subject: he might remain in there for hours.