The Cold North Sea

by The Cold North Sea (retail) (epub)

  Finch had barely walked for five minutes when he hatched upon an idea. Turning to swim against the tide of bowler hats drifting towards the station, he zigzagged across town, through the side streets, away from his surgery. Tucked away in a tastefully converted mews (the man had impeccable taste, Finch conceded), was the whitewashed brickwork and the hanging sign in Brunswick green for ‘Jilkes and Co.’.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said, as he entered the small lobby.

  ‘Oh hello. Good morning, Dr Finch,’ replied a cheery blonde girl with tight curls, sorting through the post.

  ‘Just wondered if I might catch Mr Jilkes before he got stuck into business?’

  She paused, momentarily confused.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I don’t think… Not sure he’s in today, sir.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Finch, screwing his face in mock consternation. ‘You see, I have something…’

  From his inside jacket pocket he pulled out the corner of an envelope.

  ‘…which I’m meant to see him about.’

  She gestured to the corridor that led to Jilkes’ office. Finch replied with a raised eyebrow that asked, ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course, sir. Go ahead.’

  Finch walked down the passage with its pale green carpet and expensive olive and white striped wallpaper. A clerk passed him carrying a pile of ledgers and box files wedged under his chin.

  ‘Morning, sir.’

  ‘Morning.’

  Finch knocked on the door.

  ‘Come in.’

  He entered to find Jilkes’ legal secretary at her desk in a sort of anteroom. Behind her was the dormant, dark office of Jilkes – neat, tidy, businesslike and with photographs of Agatha and the kids on his desk.

  ‘Morning, Susan.’

  ‘Morning, Dr Finch. What a surprise. How are you?’

  ‘Oh, as well as can be expected. And you?’

  ‘Very well, sir, thank you.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘She’s a tough one. You know that. Feels the cold on mornings like this. Why, we were talking about you only yesterday.’

  ‘All good, I hope?’

  She laughed.

  ‘I’m sorry but Mr Jilkes isn’t in today. He’s in Oxford. Back Wednesday.’

  Finch uttered a fake and convincing ‘damn’ under his breath. He took a furtive glance at Susan’s desk. Amid the work stuff and some unnecessary knick-knacks, plus a brand new telephone, there was a large black ledger with a ribbon place marker in it.

  ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘Now you mention it, I do remember he said he might be away. That’s rather unfortunate.’

  He dipped his hand into his jacket again and revealed the corner of the envelope.

  ‘Not a problem, sir. I can pass it on to him if you like.’

  He gave a little anguished wince.

  ‘Actually, don’t worry. It’s a personal matter… I’ll catch him when he returns… Wednesday, you say?’

  ‘Yes, sir, Wednesday.’

  There were two seats for visitors. Finch deposited himself in one. He rubbed his knee. Genuinely it did hurt, but he milked the opportunity for all it was worth.

  ‘Oh dear. Playing up again?’ asked Susan.

  ‘Afraid so. Change in the weather. Couple of minutes, it’ll be fine.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  He made himself a little more at home. He massaged his knee overly theatrically.

  ‘My goodness, how rude of me,’ she apologised. ‘Can I fetch you a cup of tea?’

  He waved it away.

  ‘Really, I wouldn’t want to impose…’

  ‘Not at all, not at all.’

  She got up.

  ‘How do you take it?’

  ‘Milk, no sugar, thanks.’

  ‘Be back in a minute.’

  ‘Make it five, Susan. I really like it to stew.’

  She smiled and bustled out through the door.

  She hadn’t closed it fully but Finch sprang to his feet, nudged it a few inches further and went to her desk. He was about to open the big black book when Susan bustled straight back into the room again.

  On the right-hand side of the desk was a telephone – the new kind with the transmitter and receiver both in the handset, which was mounted in a cradle above the rotary dialler. Finch snatched it up.

  ‘Sorry, is it all right to use the telephone…?’ he improvised. ‘Inform my surgery I’m going to be a few minutes late.’

  ‘Of course, sir… I’m sorry, sir…’

  She sighed and rolled her eyes self-mockingly.

  ‘…Memory like a sieve. Did you say sugar?’

  He shook his head. She bustled out again and he waited for the swish of her skirts to recede.

  Finch replaced the phone and opened the book. It was, as he had guessed, a diary, the ribbon marker wedged into today’s date, Monday, November 14th 1904. He turned it around to face him and flipped the page back to the previous Friday. It, like the other days, had a column of entries.

  Friday afternoon had been reserved for a partners’ meeting, it said. There was some other legal scrawl he didn’t recognise. For the morning, however, there were three entries. The scrupulous Susan, not wishing to betray legal confidence, had avoided jotting any names, only initials – which he assumed to be cross-referenced with a client book somewhere. Alongside them were corresponding phone numbers:

  G.C. – BAY 365

  E.S. – BAR 271

  M.T. – ELS 905

  He reached into his jacket again and pulled out the envelope he had been using as a prop – a bill from his grocer – took a pencil from the desk and jotted them down. He could hear the bustle of Susan’s skirts again. She entered with the tea to find Finch sitting back in his chair, flexing his knee back and forth.

  ‘Super, thank you,’ he said as he took the cup and saucer.

  After ten minutes of idle chit-chat and protestation that he was surely keeping her from her work, together with an entreaty that she would be sure to tell Jilkes he’d called on him, he was walking back through town.

  * * *

  Finch strode through the door to his surgery to find Daphne – calmer now she was serving her notice – leafing through the new edition of Lady’s World. It had an illustration of a woman in some ridiculously oversized hat on the cover. She didn’t even try to hide it away.

  ‘Morning, Daphne.’

  ‘Morning, Dr Finch,’ she replied, without looking up. ‘You have a nine o’clock. Mrs Cummings will be here… a new patient… something about bunions.’

  ‘Jolly good.’

  Inside, he shut the door, hung up his coat and went to his desk with the old-fashioned candlestick phone, the possession of a man not yet moving in Jilkes’ financial circles. He sat down, placed the envelope with the numbers written it on before him and picked up the receiver. He tapped the switch hook to establish a connection.

  ‘Hello, operator.’

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ came the cheery female voice.

  ‘I’d like to place a call… BAY 365.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘Oh, operator… can you please tell me the name of the exchange?’

  ‘B… A… Y… is Bayswater… London, West Two, sir… Hold the line, please.’

  He could hear an electronic dial tone. Then, after about twenty seconds…

  ‘Putting you through now, sir.’

  An older woman’s voice was now on the other end. It was deeper, slower.

  ‘Hello, may I help you?’

  ‘Good morning. Yes, I was just…’

  Finch suddenly realised he didn’t know what to say. He mumbled something in frustration.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. Could you please repeat that?’

  ‘Yes, of course… Are you… are you the householder?’

  Her tone suggested offence. He cursed himself for such a ridiculous opening gambit.

  ‘Why, no… the householder… the master doesn’t answer the phone hims
elf.’

  ‘Then, perhaps if…’

  ‘Is this Freeland business?’ she asked.

  ‘Freeland…?’

  She was cross now.

  ‘It either is or it isn’t, sir. If you’d like me to take a message…’

  ‘That won’t be necessary.’

  ‘Then good day to you.’

  She hung up.

  There was a knock on the door. Daphne poked her head round.

  ‘Mrs Cummings is here.’

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘Dr Finch!’

  ‘Sorry, Daphne. My apologies. Could you tell her I’ll be ready in a few minutes?’

  Daphne exited.

  Finch stared at the numbers. He must formulate a strategy. Cheeks burning with humiliation, he reached into his lower drawer for his bottle of Talisker. He uncorked it and took a good long glug.

  It was no use, he knew, he was going to have to lie… pretend to be from Jilkes’ office. No! He had a better idea. He scribbled down a few lines of dialogue, crossed them out and rewrote them.

  He called the operator again. A different woman answered, but one who had the same chirpy demeanour, as if the product of some telephone operator finishing school. He wondered what her tone would be like by the end of the day.

  ‘Could you put me through to BAR 271, please?’

  ‘Right away, sir.’

  He forgot to ask for the name of the exchange but it didn’t matter. Nor did his script.

  ‘Barnet taxicabs. Elijah Swithuns at your service. Hello…’

  He hung up and crossed out the number. He dialled the operator again – another young woman similarly schooled. He asked to be put through to the next number which, she informed him, was in ‘Elstree, Hertfordshire.’

  A woman answered; she sounded elderly.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs…?’

  ‘Thomas,’ she replied.

  ‘Of course, Mrs Thomas…’

  He consulted his lines.

  ‘…You know, I’m calling you on behalf of British Legal Services. We’re a body set up by the Home Office to assess the performance of local solicitors, just to ensure that you have been satisfied with their performance…’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I understand you’ve had some recent dealings with a company named Jilkes & Co.’

  ‘Why, yes, just this last week,’ she said. ‘Friday…’

  ‘Jolly good.’

  ‘They were sorting out my will. My husband’s long gone. I’m getting my affairs in order.’

  ‘Very wise, Mrs Thomas, very wise…’

  There was a knock on the door. Daphne popped her head round again, saw that he was on the phone and mouthed, with a discontented expression, that his patient was still waiting.

  ‘And were you satisfied with their service?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Good, good. They really are one of the best firms in the area, if not the entire country. They’ve been scoring full marks.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Who did you say you were again?’ she asked.

  ‘Thank you for your time, Mrs Thomas,’ said Finch. ‘I can assure you that all information will treated in the strictest confidence. Goodbye.’

  He hung up and crossed that number out too.

  Enthused now, he went via the operator and tried the first number again. He lowered his voice, hoping to disguise it, and tried to ooze confidence. He imagined, in fact, that he was that pompous ass, Edward.

  ‘Good morning,’ he bellowed.

  ‘Good morning,’ came the first woman’s voice again.

  ‘Now look here,’ he said. ‘I’m calling you because of Freeland.’

  She was meeker this time.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but Mr Chilcot’s not here at the moment.’

  ‘Not in, dammit! When will he be in, for goodness sake?’

  ‘We’re expecting him at eleven, sir.’

  ‘Well then, I shall be sending him a telegram. It is of the utmost importance.’

  ‘I shall see he gets it right away, Mr…?’

  ‘Your address,’ Finch thundered. ‘Remind me again… Bayswater…’

  ‘11 Chepstow Place. Please, sir, who shall I say…’

  He thanked her, hung up and blurted a satisfied, ‘Yes!’

  He looked at his watch. It was ten past nine. If he got the next train…

  He breezed out through reception. A sixty-something woman with a walking stick and a foot in a bandage sat waiting, face contorted with pain.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, Mrs…’

  ‘Cummings,’ the woman grimaced.

  ‘…But there’s been a bit of an emergency… Have to dash…’

  He turned to Daphne.

  ‘Could you please reschedule Mrs Cummings, perhaps for tomorrow…?’

  He faced the woman and winked.

  ‘…and make her a nice cup of tea.’

  She looked glum.

  ‘There will be no charge for either appointment,’ he added.

  Her face lightened.

  Daphne threw him a look of daggers as he pulled on his coat and hurried out of the door.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Two hours later, Finch was amid the white stone Regency townhouses of a west London side street. It was quiet, away from the thoroughfare of Bayswater Road, though the boom of the piles being driven for the foundations of the giant Whiteley’s department store nearby caused a periodic visceral shudder.

  Other than that it was the last house in the row, on the corner of a cross street, 11 Chepstow Place was exactly the same as the others. It was neat, tidy and smelled of discreet money. The only differentiator between each tall, terraced dwelling was the type of potted and topiaried shrubbery that stood beneath the neoclassical porticoes.

  Finch hadn’t really got a clue what to do now that he was here. Several plans swirled and none of them was convincing, so he sat in the communal gardens opposite, where glum nannies wheeled perambulators or vaguely tolerated the infants in their care. He positioned himself on a bench with a vantage point of the house, lit a cigarette and, with half an eye, reread bits of The Times.

  There seemed no slackening of the tension between Britain and Russia. Russia and Japan, for their pains, were embroiled in Manchuria in the kind of trench warfare and industrialised carnage that the conflict in South Africa had begun to hint at.

  Kaiser Bill’s exhortations for his cousin the Tsar to thwart the ‘Yellow Peril’ rising in Asia seemed to Finch a cynical ploy. In a complicated arrangement, the intervention of another power in the Far East – whether Germany or even France – would force the direct military entry of Britain. Britain had obligations to Japan under yet another of the treaties that seemed to be signed willy-nilly. He thought of Jilkes. An army’s most lethal weapon these days was its battalions of lawyers – pens mightier than the sword. This profusion of pacts seemed mere sub-clauses to an impending cataclysmic contract.

  Depressed by the turn in international politics, he leafed on. In the United States, the election triumph of Teddy Roosevelt had been eclipsed by news that, in Ohio, the Wright brothers had made another flight, powering their aerial machine for over five minutes this time. How long before America was dragged out of its isolation and into a European war? How long before someone construed an aeroplane as another kind of weapon?

  Finch studied the house. The curtains were all drawn. It seemed that nobody was home. He replayed the various scenarios he had entertained while in the train carriage and contemplated one of them – once life was evident within – of going straight up to knock on the door and bluster his way in over something or other to do with ‘Freeland’.

  But what exactly? And what would be his line of enquiry? He didn’t even know what Freeland did. All he knew was that there existed the possibility of a link between this address, someone called Chilcot, a business or company called Freeland, a person sent to menace both him and Jilkes and the murder of Pickersgill. Perhaps he should scoot o
ver to the post office and organise the delivery of a telegram, just as he had threatened on the phone. But what would he say?

  He cast his mind back to South Africa again and the mess he’d got himself into there, but how he – and Annie – successfully for a while, and against all odds, had pitted their wits against the machinery of state intelligence.

  Annie…

  Amid the languid ambling of horses, the creaks of their carts and buggies and with the sun coming out to spread a brief blanket of warmth, Finch got lost in his thoughts. The activity of the last couple of days was catching up on him. The boom of the piledriver had stopped. He felt his eyelids droop.

  He was stirred as a red rubber ball bounced across the grass and tapped into his foot. A small boy trussed up in an uncomfortable-looking sailor suit ran over. He stared up at Finch, unsure if he should approach further.

  ‘Hello, young fellow,’ said Finch cheerily.

  He picked up the ball and threw it back gently. The boy, with his young, uncoordinated hands, mistimed the catch and the ball hit him four square on the nose. He started to bawl.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ said Finch.

  He knelt down to comfort the child – ‘There’s a brave boy’ – as a stern nanny, the caricature of a middle-aged spinster, swept in to scoop up her young charge and deliver him from evil. The other nannies regarded Finch with equal scorn and pulled their young wards in close. As if picking up a cue, other children began wailing too.

  ‘Sorry,’ repeated Finch.

  The piledriving started up again.

  Amid the howls and the boom-boom-boom, Finch nearly missed the sound of a motorcar. It purred along the road then slowed to idle at the kerb. He rushed back over to the privet hedging that screened the gardens within the iron railings. A bright blue Rover automobile was now parked, engine running, alongside the pavement right outside number 11 – a high, open-topped vehicle with a single leather bench seat. The driver appeared to be a chauffeur of some sort. He was dressed in a light-grey outfit trimmed with piping. He nodded to acknowledge some signal.

  And there, descending from beneath the portico – they had been in – came the man Finch recognised, or at least imagined he recognised, from the gentlemen’s room in the Chinese restaurant. He wore a grey suit with an astrakhan-collared coat over the top. He had a pencil moustache, a purple cravat, a Homburg hat. From his left lapel sprouted a sprig of… yes… lavender.