Richard Hughes-Webb, Paul Galvin and Arnie Charnley met outside the hotel at seven a.m. for their regular morning run on the beach. Bob Silver had disappeared the previous week, and Ted Jessops, who occasionally joined them, was yet again confined to barracks. There was a muted atmosphere between the three, and instead of being sent on their way as usual by Tom’s banter they saw only a sleeping youth at the sentry post – probably a kid on a work-experience year from college – who had been allocated the night shift as Tom’s replacement. If they suspected one another of foul play it certainly wasn’t evident in their manner. Richard looked as imperious as ever, although Paul’s usual lock-jaw grin was reduced to little more than the relaxing of muscles around his mouth. Arnie appeared pale and wan from too many interrupted nights, worrying not about the police investigation but his missing cash.
As they ran down through the woods below the hotel, the scent from the escallonia, which the rain had refreshed, enriched the early morning air and accompanied them to the road they crossed before the beach.
Their initial conversation concerned Ted Jessops, and Richard was quick to inform the others. ‘Still in a bad way, I’m afraid. Had electroshock treatment yesterday in Truro. However, I heard he was seen thumbing through magazines in the large lounge yesterday afternoon, so that’s progress of sorts, although I can’t imagine the warrant for his arrest later on would have done much for his state of mind.’
They pounded softly along the beach, leaving three perfect sets of footprints on the otherwise unblemished golden sand. Each man was wrapped in his own thoughts.
It was Arnie who broke the spell. ‘Strange thing, this depression lark. Does anyone understand it?’ he asked in his thick Mancunian accent.
‘Oh yes. We do,’ Richard announced, in such a way as to brook no further discussion.
The three joggers continued further than usual along the beach. There was no disputing that this had now become a car crash of a holiday and thoughts were turning to departure the next day. The men defied their usual thresholds of pain and distance, running as if they were never going to stop, determined to forget the traumas of recent days.
After putting some extra miles on top of their usual, all three were desperate for a break and slowed down as if to order.
It was Richard who opened the conversation. ‘So, do either of you believe any of this nonsense that the three of us, along with Bob and Jessops, are under suspicion for attempted murder?’ He spat out the name Jessops in such a way that it looked like he was trying to dislodge a very hot pepper from under his tongue as quickly as possible. Ted had greatly lowered his standing in the eyes of his former friends by being thought to be the Sunday-morning telephone-box hoax caller. Paul was the first to respond to Richard, opining it was inconceivable that any of them would want to harm Tom but suggesting that the police should prioritize interviewing the porter’s nephew Ivan. Arnie, his mood already fairly dark, listened but decided to keep his own counsel. He observed Paul with a knowing side glance so piercing that if Paul had spotted it he would have stopped in his tracks. Arnie’s face was contorted in a frown that suggested complete mistrust. He regarded Paul as somewhat schizophrenic, prone to change from an affable, relaxed Dr Jekyll into a rather mean and unpleasant Mr Hyde whenever financial matters were involved. He frowned at Richard as well, still angry with him for being so unpleasant when he requested what he deemed would be a very short-term loan.
They had been running, walking and discussing matters for some two hours when they realized they had lost all grasp of time. They would now be too late for breakfast at the hotel, and the weather was deteriorating rapidly. A jagged bolt of lightning ripped across the sky, and the heavens opened to unleash a storm of terrible proportions. It seemed some latent elemental force had been set loose. The sky, an expanse of clear, azure blue when they had set off, had been set alight and was spewing rain that would have challenged Noah’s flood. Richard urged his two friends to run to the National Trust café at the end of the headland, which he calculated would now be open, it being past nine.
As they arrived, panting and wet through, their state of miserable discomfort was forgotten in sudden amazement. Standing before them, with his hands behind his back in his Humphrey Bogart raincoat, looking as if he hadn’t slept in ten years, was a haggard Bob Silver.
‘We thought you left Cornwall last week,’ yelled Richard as they approached.
‘I did, but I had a little local difficulty yesterday in the square mile with a visit from the boys in blue. I paid bail and decided to get down to Cornwall pronto. I thought you fellows would be jogging. I tried to contact you at the hotel when I came off the night sleeper at Penzance, and I guessed where you’d be. Old habits die hard. Incidentally, Yvie, Alison and the Duchess were not best pleased to hear my voice at that hour, so sorry about that.’
The three were incredulous. Paul spoke first. ‘Bob, you were never famed for your diplomatic skills, were you? You turn up out of the blue, and now we’re all going to cop it from the trouble and strifes! Henry Kissinger you are not.’
‘Sorry, Paul, and of course you two as well, but I tracked your movements from the coast road,’ Bob continued. ‘I saw you heading for the Trust café, and I knew, with this belter of a storm, you would go straight here. The thing is, gentlemen, we need to talk.’
They received this information without demur and took four seats at a large wooden table on decrepit white plastic chairs. The three strained like dogs on leashes to hear what Bob had to say.
Richard, as usual, was the first to speak. ‘We’re all ears.’
‘I know we all seem to have been implicated in this most unfortunate business of Tom’s stroke,’ Bob commenced, ‘and, as ridiculous as the whole thing seems, it would appear we have all had secrets to keep, and now we are all under considerable pressure –’
‘Oh ’eck, funny thing pressure,’ Arnie interrupted. ‘Take a good batsman, technically brilliant, got all the shots, gets a couple of noughts and next match is scratching around like rooster in the backyard.’
‘Yes, thanks, Arnie,’ continued Bob. ‘By the way, I have settled your account with old Simpkins on my Diners Club card. You can deliver the readies to my house by the month end.’
‘Cheers, mate,’ beamed Arnie, his face creased in a very broad smile. ‘But why didn’t you tell me? I’ve had Rickety Humphrey-Bumfrey blasting me for being some sort of low life.’
‘Apologies, Chutney,’ he fired back in a good-natured way. (They had now regressed to the familiar nicknames they had for one another, and Richard had long ago dubbed Arnie Charnley ‘Mango Chutney’.)
‘Look, I said I would pay, and my word is my bond.’ Bob sounded aggrieved that he could have been doubted.
Richard was keen that the four of them should get to the point. Despite some misgivings about each other, a strong kinship had developed between them over many years. In a typical male-fellowship kind of way they shared a feeling of injustice that they were the providers and that the world was an ungrateful place. They knew they had to stick together, that the heat was on and that they were unsure of the direction of the next line of fire.
‘I think one or all three of you, in fact, may know about my pioneering work into human heart disease, using animals for research and experimentation here at Zennor,’ Richard commenced in his authoritative manner. ‘I have already dealt with the police’s rather cack-handed inquiry in this regard.’
‘You probably all know about my financial disaster with the house-building project in Penzance,’ Paul put in.
‘And you know I lost my loot at Tom’s cottage,’ added Arnie.
Bob was next. ‘With me it’s more complicated. Tom was one of the few people to know about my relationship with Clive Holford, and – before any of you put two and two together and get the wrong number – I should tell you I am probably going to adopt him legally as my son.’ He went on to explain the circumstances in which he had first found Clive and how his patronage had turned the unfortunate boy’s life around so he now had a promising future as an artist.
When Bob had finished, all the men admitted they knew some of each other’s circumstances and were pleased to set the record straight with one another. Bob inquired about James Simpkins, saying he had sounded most strange when he phoned to settle Arnie’s bill.
‘Well, he’s had a ripe old time,’ responded Arnie. ‘He collapsed when the rozzers were all over the place Sunday lunchtime. Anyone would’ve thought Jack the Ripper was at large. Simpkins blacked out at reception, chipped two front teeth and was rushed in an ambulance to the hospital at Truro.’
‘Good grief! How’s he now?’ asked Bob.
‘Well, you spoke to him,’ said Richard, taking control as usual. ‘He’s back at the hotel. They stitched him up, checked his heart, pulse and blood pressure and wanted to keep him in overnight for observation, but I gather he more or less discharged himself.’
‘True,’ continued Arnie, ‘and good old Jean, the wife, drove him home and told the Duchess next day. They must have made him high as a kite. He was yelling the lyrics to songs on the radio, rocking all the way back to the hotel.’
‘So, what happened when he got back?’
‘Well, a rock has to roll.’ Arnie was now getting into his stride. ‘He retreated to his flat and would only answer questions from the other side of the locked door or on the phone.’
‘Yes, a hotel manager with a mashed-up boat race is not a good advert for his gaff,’ said Paul.
It was at this moment that Bob spotted Ken Holford, father of Clive, whom he immediately recognized from the pub in St Buryan. The four fell silent when Bob told them who Ken was, and they saw that the man was in earnest conversation with someone they all recognized: Ivan Youlen. None of them was keen to enter into conversation with the pair, so the men paid their bill and, slipping away, headed back to the hotel.
On his return to his room Richard summoned his daughter on the hotel’s internal phone. ‘Suzie, I need your attention. That old tape-recorder of yours. Fetch it. I need to set out the events of this morning’s run. Be quick, girl, and bring it to my room.’
‘Certainly, Father. Is everything all right?’
‘Don’t you worry your young head about that. We need everything properly recorded, all our ducks in a row. There are dark forces at play.’
‘Certainly, Father.’
Suzie dutifully recorded Richard’s recollections of the morning’s discussion before extracting the tape and handing it to her father, as obediently as a slave to a master.