THE LONGEST PLEASURE
Douglas Clark
© Douglas Clark 1981
Douglas Clark has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1981 by Victor Gollancz Ltd.
This edition published in 2019 by Endeavour Media Ltd.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.
Byron: Don Juan
Chapter One
Detective Chief Superintendent George Masters dropped the two or three feet from the promenade edge on to the sand and turned to help his wife down. Wanda was, by now, heavily pregnant, and Masters was taking even greater care of her than usual. He put up his long arms and lifted her down bodily. As he did so, he heard the shout.
“Hoy! Hoy!”
As Wanda made sure her voluminous coat was properly settled after her somewhat unceremonious descent, Masters turned in the direction from which the shout had come. Shambling at a half-run towards them was a policeman, hampered in his progress by the softness of the sand and the rubber boots he was wearing.
Masters had taken a few days of the leave owing to him to bring Wanda away for a last break before she had her child. It was early spring. The Isle of Wight was practically deserted. They had been able to enjoy the solitude and the strolls along the water’s edge in the bright, breezy weather. Wrapped up warmly, Wanda had enjoyed the wind playing through her hair and the sense of freedom the solitude had given her. Each day they had taken this same walk and Masters had been highly pleased at his wife’s enjoyment and her obvious good health and well-being. But today—their last full day—it seemed they were not to be left entirely alone to enjoy their slow saunter.
“Hoy!” The policeman was waving his arms as if to shoo them off the beach and up again on to the promenade.
“You can’t come along here, sir,” puffed the constable as he came up. “You’ll have to get off the front altogether.”
“May I ask why, Constable?”
“No, you may not, sir. Now, if you and the lady will get back up there and move along to the other side of the road block . . .”
“There was no road block when we came,” said Wanda.
“There will be now, madam.”
“Just a moment,” said Masters. “I’m sure you have your reasons and your orders, but I’d like to know why my wife and I are being denied the use of a deserted public beach.”
“Can’t tell you that,” said the constable, getting his wind back. “But I’d be on my way if I were you, mate. I don’t want to stand here arguing with you all day.”
“Careful,” warned Masters, who was the last person on earth any constable should address as mate. Not only did Masters not like it for his own sake, but he was more than keen that policemen should show courtesy to the public at all times. He insisted on it among those who worked with him, and he expected it now. “I asked a reasonable question, and I expect a reasonable answer.”
“Not from me,” grunted the constable. “You can call at the station for your answers.” He turned to Wanda. “Now, lady! Up you go.” He put his hand out to turn her to face the wall.
Masters produced his wallet from the inside pocket of his parka with one hand, and with the other took a grip on the outstretched arm of the constable.
“I’ll have you,” grunted the uniformed man. “Assaulting a policeman in the . . .”
“Rubbish,” grated Masters, allowing the wallet to fall open and display his warrant card. “Who is in charge of this operation?”
“George, please,” said Wanda. “Don’t cause a fuss.”
They had been so immersed in their own situation that they had not noticed the approach of the sergeant along the promenade.
“What’s going on here, Crowther?”
Masters looked up. “Are you in charge here, Sergeant?”
“Who wants to know?”
“I do.”
“He’s a . . . he’s a Chief Superintendent, Sergeant.”
“Oh! Well, sir.”
“Well, sir, what?”
“Things on the beach,” said the sergeant.
“Get down here and tell me what things,” ordered Masters, who felt strongly disinclined to look up to the man standing above him.
The sergeant dropped heavily to the sand.
“Now? I want to know why you are interfering with the rights of the public without offering any explanation.”
“Well, sir, there’s been some heavy gales in the channel lately.”
Masters nodded.
“One or two small coasters got into a bit of trouble and lost deck cargo. One actually sank.”
Masters nodded again. He had read and heard of these incidents. Newspapers and news bulletins had been full of them.
“Well, sir, the breezes have been a bit fresh these last few days and setting inshore with the tide. Last night a number of things started to be washed up on the beach along here.”
“What sort of things?”
“All sorts, sir. But what we’re worried about are the chemicals.”
“Canisters of chemicals?”
“That’s right, sir. Arsenic something or another. I’ve got it written down.” The sergeant took out his notebook, from which he took a folded sheet of paper.
“Arsenic trichloride, amino methyl propanol and phenyl benzanine,” murmured Masters. “They sound dangerous.”
“They are, sir. We’ve got everybody we can find looking for them and as many scientists as we can muster. We’ve even got the science master from the boys’ school helping to handle them.”
“Just the canisters?”
“That’s right, sir. All the other bits and pieces that have been thrown up are being gathered by council workmen, but they’ve got strict orders not to touch unfamiliar objects.”
“I see. Now, Sergeant, I’d like to give you a bit of advice.”
“Yes, sir?”
“When you have to cause the general public some inconvenience, even in the line of serious duty, such as this, where you have to close the promenade and beach, for heaven’s sake make sure that your men can offer some reasonable explanation.”
“We were told not to mention the chemicals, sir.”
“Why?”
“My inspector said we might cause alarm and despondency, sir.”
“But that is monstrous, Sergeant. For two reasons. The first is that no matter how much you try to keep this operation quiet, every newshawk within two hundred miles will have it before teatime, and if they don’t know the facts they’ll make them up. The second is a more serious matter.”
“Oh, yes, sir?”
“What if one of the dangerous canisters is washed up on a beach you haven’t cordoned off? Some unsuspecting person may come across it and suffer because of the encounter. But if the public at large knows there are dangerous articles on the shore . . .”
“I get it, sir,” said the sergeant. “I’ll ask my inspector to change his mind and send a loud-speaker car round.” He looked straight at Masters. “It would probably help, sir, if I were to have your name and say you had suggested it.”
Masters grinned. “I understand, Sergeant. That’s a polite way of asking to see my card for yourself.” He again took out his wallet to display the warrant. As the sergeant inspected it, he asked: “I’d like your name in return.”
“Gardam, sir.”
“Th
ank you.” As he put his wallet back into his pocket, Masters said to Crowther: “I don’t like being called mate. Cure yourself of the habit, Constable.”
He helped Wanda up on to the promenade and then followed her. Before they were out of earshot, they heard Gardam begin to berate Crowther. “Of all the bloody people on this floating island, Joe Crowther, you had to pick on that one to tangle with.”
“I wasn’t to know who he was, Sarge. I don’t even know now, except he’s a senior officer.”
“Senior Officer? That’s only George bloody Masters of Scotland bloody Yard. The bloke who’s reckoned to be The Great-I-Am of all the jacks in the country.”
“Oh!”
“Oh? Is that all you can say, Constable? You want to think yourself lucky he didn’t lose his temper. I saw what was going on as I came up. I reckon, Joe, that if you’d actually touched his missus—if he hadn’t managed to stop you in time—he’d have put you in hospital. And serve you right! Mate, indeed!” The sergeant raised his eyes as if seeking assistance to help him believe it possible. “Calling Detective Chief Superintendent George Masters mate to his face and getting away with it! It must be your bloody birthday, Joe.”
Arm in arm, Masters and Wanda strolled to the Jaguar—the one great luxury in their lives. “Where now, darling?”
“Cowes,” replied Masters. “A stroll down the High Street there, looking at all the little shops, will be a change.”
Masters drove across the island, through Newport. He was determined to make no comment as they passed Parkhurst prison. But Wanda, once she realised what it was, said: “I suppose quite a number of the guests are there at your invitation.”
“I believe there are a few of my acquaintances inside. But not at my invitation. Most of them were positively insistent in proposing themselves for a stay.”
“I’ll take your word for it, but I don’t think those in question would.”
Masters didn’t reply. He drove down into Cowes, parking the car in a side street to avoid the one-way system. Then, together, they worked their way down the narrow thoroughfare, crossing from side to side to gaze into the shops displaying boat fittings, antiques and sailing gear.
After coffee in a small café behind a confectioner’s shop, they turned right down a narrow way to the sea-front to stroll along past the Royal Yacht Squadron and its battery of starting cannon. Wanda seemed blissfully happy, and Masters was more than content. The brush with Crowther was forgotten. Their last day on the island was as idyllic as they could have hoped. It was while they were making their way back to the little pub they had earmarked for lunch that they heard the police car patrolling the road and blaring out a warning to beware of unfamiliar objects on the beaches and to report suspicious items to the police or harbour authorities.
Chapter Two
Wanda’s baby had been born. A son, Michael. He was a thriving, engaging scrap, and by the time he was three months old had a host of admirers. Not least among these were DCI Green and his wife, Doris. Though not yet ready to entrust her offspring to baby-sitters in the evenings, Wanda welcomed Doris Green’s ever-ready offer to watch over Michael whilst she undertook the shopping expeditions necessary to keep herself and her family clothed and fed. When Mrs Green stood the afternoon watch, it was the understood thing that she should stay on, not only for a cup of tea, but to participate in the ceremony of bathing the baby—which started promptly at five-thirty—followed by feeding and snuggling down. By the time all this had been accomplished, it was mutually agreed that it would be too late for Doris to travel across London and then prepare supper for her husband who—at about the time the child normally closed its eyes to sleep—was customarily leaving the Yard at the end of the day’s work. So Green would be instructed to walk home with Masters to the cottage behind Westminster Hospital to collect his wife or, more often, to stay for the evening meal.
It was on one such occasion—on an overcast day in July—that Masters and Green stopped to buy an evening paper just after crossing Victoria Street.
The double-deck headline was big and black: ‘Botulism in West Country’. ‘Family of Four in Danger’.
Masters glanced at it. Green read it over his shoulder. Masters folded the tabloid to carry as they continued on their way. “Rotten word, botulism,” said the DCI. “Almost as bad as cancer.”
“But not nearly so prevalent, thank heaven.”
Green took a moment or two to reply, as though he were considering very carefully what he should say.
“Funny, though,” he said at last.
“What is?”
“The incidence of botulism.”
“Funny? Botulism?”
“The incidence. Not the disease itself.”
“Sorry, Bill, I’m not following you.”
“You said it is extremely rare in this country.”
“Right.”
“The last outbreak was in August seventy-eight, when those four people in Birmingham ate a contaminated tin of salmon.”
“Even I can remember that,” said Masters with a smile. Green had an encyclopaedic memory, and it was this which had, from time to time, lifted him out of the ordinary run of jacks and had allowed him to hold his own among the more imaginative men like Masters. Experienta docet, and experiences are only good teachers if you can remember them. Green remembered everything—just so long as it was given to him in simple English and not, to use his own words, in some fantouche lingo which, because he couldn’t understand, he couldn’t assimilate.
“I read an article about botulism when the Birmingham case was on,” continued Green. “It said that the most serious outbreak ever in Britain was in nineteen twenty-two.”
“Would that be the fishing party in Scotland?”
“At Loch Maree. Eight of them ate sandwiches made of potted duck and they all kicked the bucket.”
“I remember reading about it—now you mention it.”
“But do you remember that after that Loch Maree incident there were only two other cases in Britain before the Birmingham do? One in a macaroni café here in London a year or two after the war—forty-nine, I think it was—and the other in fifty-eight, caused by some pickled fish from Mauritius?”
“Go on. What’s your point?”
“The intervals. Twenty-seven years between Loch Maree and the macaroni. Nine years between the macaroni and the Mauritian fish. Twenty years between the fish and Birmingham. And now, since Birmingham, less than two years to this business in the West Country.”
“I see. That’s the thing which strikes you as funny about the incidence?”
“Yes. The intervals should be lengthening, not shortening.”
“Because of modern methods of food handling?” They stopped at the kerb to use the controlled crossing.
“That’s why I said it was funny.”
“I get your point. But surely, because botulism is so rare in this country, wouldn’t you expect the intervals between outbreaks to be haphazard? Without any particular pattern?”
Green grunted—whether in assent or dissent was not apparent—but Masters was so accustomed to this particular form of equivocal acknowledgement that he ignored it and they continued in silence for the short distance that remained.
Green called it Wanda’s palace, a name that suited the appointments but not the size of the little house. When he and Masters were in the tiny hall, they overcrowded it, particularly at this time when Master Michael Masters’ perambulator was parked there.
Wanda appeared before they were fairly indoors. A shaft of early evening sun had broken through the clouds and had somehow found its way through the dining room window and into the little hall to silhouette her and shine through the gossamer strands of her very fine fair hair.
“Anything I can do?” asked Masters after he’d kissed her. “Lay the table or chop the mint?”
“All done. Doris is watching the vegetables and making the gravy.” She turned to Green. “Hello, William. How are you?”
&nbs
p; “Fair-to-middlin’,” replied Green with a grin. “We’ve got a lot in common, you know, love. We both have to suffer His Nibs here.”
“Has he been getting you down?”
“He’s been behaving fairly well recently. I’ll let you into a secret. I don’t think he’s been really with us since the sprog came along.”
“I knew he was very happy with his son, but I didn’t know it was affecting his work.”
“Something terrible. But how is the boyo? Can I creep up and take a peep at him?”
“Don’t be long. We’ll be ready for you in ten minutes.”
“Make it a quarter of an hour,” pleaded Masters. “Then Bill and I can have a drink when we get down.”
They were all four in the sitting room—a crowd for so small a room—when Green put down his drink and asked: “Could we have the mid-evening news?”
“Bill!” expostulated his wife. “You don’t ask for the telly in other people’s houses.”
“I have done, love.”
“I’d like to hear the news myself,” said Masters, switching on. “The evening paper says there’s been an outbreak of botulism.”
“Where?”
“In the west country, somewhere. I’ve not had time to read the article.”
“Oh dear,” said Wanda. “That does make me nervous. I shall be putting Michael on tinned baby foods, and . . .”
“You’ve nothing to worry about,” said Doris Green firmly. “You’re feeding him yourself and there’s months to go before he’s on tinned food.”
“Good idea, feeding him yourself,” added her husband. “Natural. Gives him all the protection in the world and saves him from allergies in later life.”
“You seem to know all about it,” said Masters with a grin.
“Read it up, Doris and me, as soon as we knew Wanda was expecting.”
“You did what?”
“Read it up. Ah! This is it. Let’s have a bit of sound on that contraption, George.”
The announcer’s voice filled the room.
“. . . outbreak of botulism on Exmoor. Four people, Mr and Mrs Burnham and their two young children, aged ten and eight, are in hospital in Taunton. The Burnham family are believed to have eaten a tin of ham for their tea three evenings ago. The four were taking a camping holiday on Exmoor and were catering for themselves. Doctors at the Taunton and Somerset Hospital have issued a statement about the family’s condition. It says that all four are seriously ill, their condition having been aggravated by the fact that because they had chosen an isolated spot for their camp, no medical help had been given until thirty-six hours after the suspected ham had been eaten. Two students on a walking tour discovered the four Burnhams lying in and around their tent, and after realising they were ill, had to summon help. Here is our medical correspondent, Oliver Garside.”
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