One
Friday
Just before seven o’clock in the evening, Mr E. E. Hollibon of the Automobile Association took a last drag on his cigarette and stubbed it out in a nasty, overfilled ashtray. Then, muttering, he turned his chair away from the spectacular view of the Palace Pier silhouetted against the pinkly glittering sea. This being a warm August evening – the Friday preceding the 1957 Bank Holiday – he had earlier allowed himself to remove his AA uniform jacket, but now he stood up and put it on again, buttoning to the neck. Back in his chair, he sat up straight. It was time to radio a patrolman.
‘Officer Inman? Do you receive me? Over.’ Hollibon carefully enunciated into his microphone, using his best, brisk NCO speaking tones, and pressing a button on its base. When he released the button there was no reply. ‘This is AA Brighton Control calling Officer Inman. Repeat, this is AA Brighton Control. Confirm position, please, Officer Inman. Repeat, confirm position. Over.’
He took his finger off the button, and a response came over the crackling airwaves.
‘Just pulling in as it happens, Eddie,’ was the affable reply. ‘Here, I bet you put your jacket on just to do that, didn’t you? I can hear it in your voice, mate.’
Hollibon huffed with impatience. Mate? Officer Andrew Inman never observed proper radio protocol. He always said he’d had enough of that malarkey in the war. But calling his controller mate?
‘Confirm position, please, Officer Inman. Repeat, confirm position. This is Brighton Control. Over,’ said Hollibon.
Sighing, Officer Inman (who preferred to be called Officer Andy) relented and confirmed his position in an acceptable manner. ‘Arrived Hassocks address, Dale House, nineteen hundred hours,’ he said. ‘But for the last time, Eddie, why do you keep telling me you’re blooming AA Brighton Control? I know it’s you. I mean, who else is going to call me on this thing? Lord Haw-Haw?’
There was a long pause while Hollibon waited for his patrolman to say ‘over’.
‘You have to say “over”, Officer Inman. I’ve told you a thousand times.’
‘Look—’
‘It’s so simple! Any schoolboy can do it! In fact, any schoolboy would love to!’
‘My motorist is waiting, Eddie.’
‘All right, but it’s a good job you’re my best mechanic, Andy. Over and out. Repeat, over and out!’
Hollibon leaned across his desk to make a note on the large, nicotine-yellowed wallchart (‘19.00 A.I. Dale House, Hassocks’), and then – after a deep, steadying breath – shuffled his chair to the window to admire the still-warm evening sunlight dancing on the sea and enjoy a lovely, well-earned Weights pure Virginia cigarette (two and elevenpence for twenty).
Despite the insubordination he endured nightly from Officer Andy Inman, Hollibon did enjoy this job. He particularly relished peaceful, still moments such as this: the beginning of the night shift on a clear late-summer evening, with both patrolmen out and about in their shiny new yellow Land Rovers, selflessly serving the motoring public. On the small primus stove in the corner of his little office, a kettle was coming to the boil beside a ready-warmed brown teapot. The AA insignia on his lapel glinted in the low light. And best of all, the latest hit of smoke and nicotine was working its ineffable magic, as a really promising cough started to boil up in his chest.
Mr Hollibon was an ardent smoker with all the hallmarks of a man who has inhaled warmed-up toxins continuously for more than thirty years. The puckered skin, deep-stained fingers, disgusting cough: he flaunted them all with pride. An army doctor had once asked if his cough was ‘productive’, and he had replied, truthfully, ‘Yes, very.’ Leaning forward now, he alternately coughed and struggled for breath until (yes!) a veritable torrent of expectoration was produced. And then, pleased with himself, he lit a fresh fag to celebrate.
As it happened, on this same fine evening at the same serene hour, the young and smartly uniformed Constable Peregrine Twitten of the Brighton Police was making his methodical way through the nearby streets of Kemp Town.
He checked the shutters and gates of garages and goods yards; he hailed cyclists to inform them of lighting-up time; he called good evening to the drivers of the miniature trains on the Volk’s Electric Railway who had just finished their day’s work on the seafront; also, when summoned for the purpose by the dog-tired parents of scruffy street urchins, he would crouch down amid a group of overexcited six-year-olds and tell them, in all (mock) seriousness, that if they weren’t well-behaved boys and girls he would arrest them on the spot, and march them off to prison.
All this warm-hearted Dixon of Dock Green activity might lead you to suppose that the twenty-two-year-old Twitten had been somehow demoted to the duties of a workaday constable, but in fact he was, rather, doing his ‘rounds’ – this being an enterprise of his own devising, conducted on his own time.
‘The thing is, sir, I’m a young, fit policeman yet I’ve never experienced being on the beat,’ he had explained to an unconvinced Sergeant Brunswick a couple of weeks earlier.
‘Lucky you, son.’
‘You don’t understand, sir. I’ve been here nearly two months and all I’ve done is solve fiendish high-stakes crimes perpetrated by the worst kind of brutal criminal and psychopath. I’ve been on the spot when two individuals were shot in the head!’ Twitten stopped talking and calculated. ‘No, I’m wrong about that, it’s three!’
‘So?’
‘Well, for one thing, it’s not bally normal, sir. And for another, it isn’t helping me be a good policeman.’
‘No?’
‘I want to serve the people of this town, which means I should be diligently pounding the streets with a notebook, pencil and whistle, absorbing all of Brighton’s subtle diurnal rhythms. You know the sort of thing. How many pints of milk are delivered at number forty-two; what time does Mr Smith the grocer cycle home from the pub; how many people are sleeping every night beneath the Palace Pier? Instead of which it’s been all Bang! Bang! Bang! and blood and brains and eyeballs and screams, not to mention people getting brained with giant bally humbugs.’
They were alone together at their desks in the police station when they had this conversation. Brunswick shrugged and took a sip of tea. On the whole, the sergeant approved of young Twitten, but he thought it a bit rich for him to complain of too much flaming excitement. Wasn’t he the one who always stirred things up? Only last week, Twitten had started talking about the need to compile ‘criminal records’, claiming that this would ‘revolutionise detective methods’! But luckily – since the actual work would involve typing cards and filing them – Inspector Steine had put a stop to that at once. ‘Typing and filing are women’s work, Twitten,’ Steine had pronounced. ‘Especially filing. It’s bad enough that you insist on typing your own reports.’
Twitten likewise sipped his tea, made for him by Mrs Groynes, the cheerful cockney charlady. It was a very nice cup, as it happened, with his usual two sugars, but for historical reasons, he shuddered to think what else she might have put in it. Despite the short time he had been in Brighton, Twitten already had quite a history with Mrs Groynes, which could be boiled down to two essentials:
1) his discovery that Mrs-Groynes-the-charlady was in fact a cunning criminal mastermind (in disguise); and
2) Mrs Groynes’s brilliant countermove, involving bogus stage hypnotism, which rendered it impossible for Twitten to convince other people that she wasn’t what she seemed.
‘I ought to arrest you,’ he had said to her at the close of the last case he had been instrumental in solving. And she had patted his hand and said, ‘I know, dear. That’s your burden.’
Yet here he was, still drinking – and enjoying – the tea she made; still eating the currant buns. Talk about an ethical pickle! And, as always, it had been his own bally cleverness that had produced this frustrating state of affairs. Why had he not been content to take Mrs Groynes at face value, as everyone else did? Look how happy the others were, living in the dark.
‘Would you mind telling me something, Sergeant Brunswick, sir?’ Twitten ventured. ‘When you’d been in the force just a couple of months, what were you most afraid of?’
Brunswick thought for a moment and then laughed at the memory. ‘I was scared of old Sergeant “Roly-Poly” Rowland waiting for me at the police box on the London Road, red in the face and with his hands on his hips.’
Twitten felt a pang of self-pity. Here, starkly, was the difference between them. The young Brunswick had feared being mildly ticked off by a comically fat police sergeant. Twitten’s own worst fear was of being garrotted up a dark alley by a villainess masquerading as a Mrs Mopp.
They sat in silence and then Brunswick – in a rush of conscience – said sheepishly, ‘I can’t believe no one told you about the pay parade on Thursday afternoons, son.’
Twitten pursed his lips. This was a very sore point.
‘Well, no one did, sir. Not even you.’
‘I know. Was it really six weeks before you …?’
‘Yes, sir. Six bally weeks. I’d begun to surmise that the salary must be disbursed annually.’
Brunswick bit his lip. Was this perhaps the right moment to inform Twitten about the police canteen across the road from the station? It did seem unfair that the young constable still didn’t know about it. But two months down the line, it was too late to drop it casually into conversation. Why hadn’t Twitten worked it out for himself? That’s what Brunswick wanted to know. Didn’t he hear all the excited references to tripe and onions on Tuesdays? Didn’t he notice how people disappeared from their desks at half-past twelve, crossed the road, entered an unmarked building by a side door, and came back thirty minutes later with custard stains on their trousers? If those weren’t subtle diurnal rhythms, he’d like to know what was.
But somehow the observant Twitten had not yet postulated the existence of a police canteen. And now, a few days after his friendly chat with Sergeant Brunswick, here he was, thoroughly enjoying his nightly ‘rounds’ of Kemp Town and arriving at the AA Control Centre on Marine Parade just after seven o’clock – or ‘tea o’clock time’ as he had recently learned to call it.
‘Good evening, Mr Hollibon, it’s me! At tea o’clock!’ he called, appearing at the open door just as Hollibon was pouring hot water into his teapot.
‘Ah, Constable Twitten,’ said Hollibon, looking up without enthusiasm. He rather resented the way police officers dropped in like this, expecting free refreshment. And there seemed to be more of them lately. ‘Perfect timing,’ he joked. ‘You must have been outside, waiting for the kettle to boil.’
‘Well, to be frank, I was lurking by the door,’ admitted Twitten. ‘But mainly so as not to intrude on that absolutely revolting coughing fit you were having.’
He pulled a chair towards him and sat down. ‘I know it’s not my place to say so, Mr Hollibon,’ he said, ‘but does it really never occur to you that inhaling the fumes from cigarettes is unbelievably stupid?’
With the August Bank Holiday approaching, the whole of Brighton was gearing up for visitors. While the high summer had seen record-breaking temperatures (with a consequent horrifying plague of jellyfish), the weather on the Bank Holiday was set fair again, and traders were rubbing their hands in anticipation, as were, of course, the tricksters, dodgy street-photographers and junior whizz mobs (juvenile pickpockets). It was sometimes cynically suggested at Chamber of Commerce meetings that instead of ‘Kiss Me Quick’, the seaside straw hats sold in the little kiosks on the piers ought to bear the legend ‘Fleece Me Fast’, so as better to represent the true and somewhat alarming experience of the naive Brighton holiday-maker.
And on this Friday night, the weekend activities were all just about to start – the dancing, the bingo, the Ghost Train on the Palace Pier, the children’s talent shows at the Peter Pan Playground, the Ice Circus at the Sports Stadium in West Street, with its breathtaking stunt skaters, clowns, performing chimps and high trapeze. At the Hippodrome, Winifred Atwell was warming up her knuckles for the piano; backstage at the Theatre Royal, a young Frankie Howerd was leaning against a distempered dressing-room wall, telling jokes unfit for public consumption.
The cusp of evening was a magical time here: an ending and a beginning. The day-visitors had made their way back to the railway station and the Southdown coach stops; the holiday-makers were tucking into their cooked dinners in drab boarding-house dining rooms. The children’s entertainers were packing up, and the beach donkeys trailing back to their stables in Hove. But at the same time, the lights on the piers were starting to glow against the slowly darkening sky, and the juke boxes beginning to blare, and on the sea breeze you could catch tantalising hints of candyfloss, cockles in vinegar, Charrington’s Toby Ale, infant urine, cordite from the shooting ranges, and seaweed.
Twitten wasn’t the only policeman out and about tonight. At seven o’clock, Sergeant Brunswick was waiting outside the Sports Stadium with tickets for the ice show, wearing his neatly pressed collar open (no tie) under a light, three-buttoned jacket. He looked very handsome. He’d had a shave-and-haircut especially, at Rodolfo’s in Western Road, and was even wearing a splash of Cossack (‘for Men’) from the bottle he’d got for Christmas from his auntie Violet. His gift to her had been a refrigerator, as it happens, but that’s another story.
Annoyingly, he had bumped into Inspector Steine while dressed in this mufti. Steine was on his way to the Dome Theatre to take part in a live BBC transmission of the popular radio show What’s Your Game? He said nothing about Brunswick’s un-policemanlike appearance, but you could tell from the way he turned away sharply (‘Brunswick, what on earth …?’ he rasped) that the throat-catching Cossack (‘for Men’) was not a male toiletry he’d be requesting next Christmas for himself.
‘I take it you’re meeting someone, Brunswick?’
‘Yes, sir. A young lady. You’ve met her yourself, actually, sir, at the Lactic Lovelies beauty contest you helped to judge the other night.’
Steine cast his mind back. ‘You secured a date with the winner?’
‘Oh, no, sir!’ Brunswick coloured a little. The winner had been a stunning girl with a waist the diameter of a drainpipe and eyebrows modelled on Ava Gardner’s. ‘No, not the winner, one of the runners-up, sir. Barbara Ashley. Actually, you might remember her. She was the blonde in the red swimsuit who made the point that “Lactic Lovelies” was an offensive name, sir.’
‘It was a Milk Board contest, Brunswick.’
‘The winner was going forward to compete for Dairy Maid Miss of 1957.’
‘Yes, but—’
Steine waved a hand. ‘All I know is, she’d have stood a better chance of winning if she’d held her tongue. I hope the upcoming Knickerbocker Glory contestants show more sense.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Brunswick knew when it was time to stop arguing. ‘Well, good luck tonight, sir. My auntie loves What’s Your Game? She says it’s very funny.’
‘Really?’ said Steine, puzzled. ‘Oh, I’m sure it’s not supposed to be.’
And so now Brunswick was waiting for Barbara Ashley, and feeling rather good about everything except, perhaps, the aftershave, which was making his eyes water. Barbara was amazing. A twenty-year-old clerk at a meat-importer’s in Shoreham, she was blonde, measured 34–22–36 and wore coral lipstick – all fairly predictable in a beauty-contest entrant. But there was something unusual about Barbara. She was direct and bold and unsimpering. On top of which (and Brunswick’s pulse quickened whenever he thought of it), she appeared to have a highly idiosyncratic psychosexual quirk that attracted her to older, injured men, especially those who’d been shot in the leg!
Naturally, this interesting facet of Barbara’s personality hadn’t come to light straight away. First, she had let him buy her a thick and frothy pink milkshake, and had told him this was her fifth beauty contest of the summer. And then, as they stood together with their drinks, she’d confided in a low voice that there was something fishy about the girls who always won. She had hinted that the fishiness in question might interest him as a policeman.
Brunswick had not wanted to hear this. Like most men, he was uncomfortable hearing a woman complain about anything; it made him defensive. So he had deliberately swerved away from the subject, chuckling, ‘Blimey, there seems to be a contest for something every day of the week this summer, have you noticed? Dog shows, horse shows, flower shows! And everyone takes them so seriously! I don’t get it; I really don’t. My inspector’s judging a Knickerbocker Glory competition for the local paper – it’s only flaming ice cream – and he seems to think it’s the most important job in the world! And then my barber’s furious just because he didn’t get selected to take part in something called Barber of the Year! It’s out of all proportion, in my opinion. I keep telling both of them, these contests are just a bit of fun.’
Barbara had given him a steady look. She really was quite forceful. Her eyes – a deep blue – seemed to scour his insides. ‘I’m not talking about barbers or ice creams or dogs, Sergeant Brunswick. I’m talking about girls with unnaturally large busts and missing ribs who are in fact models and escorts, going around the country winning all the local beauty contests! They receive coaching, Sergeant! They are shipped in, like – well, like so much Argentinian corned beef!’
He hadn’t known what to say to that. But he did admire the way she so deftly reached for imagery from the meat-importing business.
‘Can I take you out, please, Miss Ashley?’ Brunswick had said, in a rush. ‘How about the Ice Circus? It’s fantastic this year. Clowns and trapeze artists and whatnot.’
She gave him a severe look, then set down her milkshake glass and, leaning close, took hold of his lapel. The movement was breathtakingly unexpected.
‘Tell me what’s wrong with your leg,’ she whispered.
‘My leg?’ His eyes swivelled. Was this a suitable question from a young lady? She was standing so close, he could feel her breath on his face.
‘You’ve got a limp, Sergeant. Don’t deny it.’
‘Oh. Well …’ He glanced around to check that no one else was within earshot. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘if you must know, I’ve been shot in the line of duty a couple of times. That’s all.’
He expected her to laugh at him (or, at least, release him), but to his surprise, her eyes widened and she clung on.
‘Shot!’ she repeated with an intake of breath. ‘I knew it. Go on.’ Her whole manner had softened. Her pupils were dilated to a worrying degree.
He swallowed, but maintained eye contact. Whatever was going on here was completely new to him. If warning bells were also ringing, he didn’t care. It was months since he’d been this close to a girl.
‘To be honest,’ he admitted, slowly, ‘it’s more than a couple of times. It’s three … or four.’
Gasping again, she briefly closed her eyes (but in a good way).
‘Look, all right. It’s six.’ At the word ‘six’ she actually let out a whimper.
Then she leaned forward and whispered, ‘Shot … by criminals?’
He gulped. ‘Yes.’
‘Oh, my God, six times,’ she breathed. ‘And exactly … where?’
Brunswick wasn’t sure how to answer. ‘Well, mostly out of doors,’ he began, but she held up a hand to stop him, picked up her pink milkshake and gave a loud, final suck on the straw. ‘I’ll meet you on Friday for your Ice Circus, Sergeant Jim Brunswick,’ she said. Then she turned away, adding, ‘Don’t be late.’
But now, here he was, and Barbara Ashley was nowhere to be seen. At twenty-past seven, when everyone else had gone in, Brunswick saw a red American sports car draw up across the road and a tall, athletic man jump out and run to the stage door. But that was the only thing of interest. At half-past seven, he gave up hope. She wasn’t coming. He tore up the tickets in a dramatic gesture, and crossed the road.
He was going back to the station. It was his best option. After being stood up like this, if he went to a pub, he’d feel conspicuously alone. The pictures? No, he’d seen four films this week already, and on Friday nights cinemas were packed with young couples.
Go home? Not likely. His dear auntie Violet would be tuned to What’s Your Game? on the Home Service, which this week featured as guest-panellist Inspector Geoffrey Steine of the Brighton Police!
Across town, in the airless Green Room at the Dome Theatre, Inspector Steine was shaking hands with his fellow panellists and wishing he hadn’t come. Evidently What’s Your Game? was a beloved BBC institution, and all the other guests had appeared on it a hundred times. They were dressed in glamorous evening clothes, laughing urbanely together when he entered.
Seated on a stained divan were two coiffed and shapely women wearing crystal necklaces, evening gloves and off-the-shoulder satin; standing, two balding men in white-tie were smoking furiously, as if about to face a firing squad. Several bottles of spirits stood open on the various occasional tables, and half-finished drinks cluttered every surface. The scene was somehow classy and tawdry at the same time.
It was also both casual and frantic. The producer who escorted Steine from the stage door seemed extremely hard-pressed; the atmosphere was nothing like the calm of the inspector’s weekly BBC recordings, in his sealed-quiet studio in Broadcasting House. And some of the anxiety, apparently, had been innocently caused by him. He should have reported for duty at half-past six at the latest – though to be fair to him, no one had said so.
‘Our policeman’s here at last!’ announced the producer, rather gracelessly. Then, with an audible ‘Tsk’, he turned on his heel.
‘Hello,’ said Steine, extending a hand in the direction of the ladies. ‘Geoffrey Steine, Brighton Police. So to coin a phrase, hello, hello, hello, what’s all this then?’
He expected a smile, but none came. ‘That’s it,’ said one of the women, opening her handbag to retrieve a silver powder compact. ‘I’m telephoning Tony first thing on Tuesday. They can’t expect us to work like this.’
‘Now, Gloria, don’t be such a beast,’ said one of the balding men, waving a cigarette held elegantly between his middle and fourth fingers. This man’s demeanour struck Steine as perfectly debonair – almost as if being debonair was what he did for a living (actually, it was).
‘Hello, Steine, old boy,’ he said, draping an arm round the inspector’s shoulders. ‘Look, you seem a bit lost, and I’m afraid we go on in ten minutes, and our poor highly strung producer is having a nervous collapse, so I’d better introduce everyone. How’s that?’
Steine swallowed. What had he got himself into? Who were these ghastly people?
‘Well, now, let’s see. First of all, I’m Gerry Edlin. We judged that dog show together a couple of weeks ago, do you remember? Enormous fun. We disagreed over who should win the waggiest tail, but I bowed to your superior judgment.’ He smiled as a joke occurred to him. ‘Or perhaps I should say I bow-wowed?’
Such wordplay was lost on Steine. ‘Oh, yes. I remember. That was good of you. But on the other hand, of course, you were wrong and I was right.’
‘Well, Lord, anything for an easy life, that’s me! So I’m in Brighton for the summer, doing magic and a few jokes in the big show down the road. For my sins, I’m the regular chairman of this silly game, and it’s in my honour that they dragged everyone else down here tonight, can you believe it? Normally we do this up in town, and darling Frank Muir is in your seat. That’s why the girls are so grumpy. Frank is hilarious. We adore him. He has the audience in stitches. But tragically he couldn’t make it, hence your good self valiantly stepping into the breach when all the other chaps who’d been asked either got better offers at the last minute or found out how appalling the pay was.’
The others tittered. Steine smiled, weakly. Had Gerry Edlin just said they were going on in ten minutes? He tried to remember precisely how the invitation from the BBC had been worded, when they’d telephoned him. It was something like: ‘You’ll have heard What’s Your Game?, Inspector. Honestly, there’s nothing to it. Chap of your experience, you’ll take it in your stride. And on home turf, too. Five guineas all right?’ And just like that, he’d said yes.
‘So this is Lady Prunella Cavendish.’
One of the women frostily raised a glass to him.
‘Lady Pru is your teammate, and an absolute fiend of a quizzer. I advise you as a new bug to follow her lead in all matters. She gives the impression of not being competitive, but between you and me, if you outshine her in any way, she’ll batter you to death with her stilettos.’
At this, the other balding male guest burst out laughing (a weird, high giggle), and Prunella shouted, ‘You rat, Gerry!’ – but affectionately and a bit too loudly, in a pointedly cliquish aren’t-we-all-friends-in-showbiz kind of way.
By now, Steine was feeling giddy with panic.
‘And here is Gloria Powell, famous comedy actress and fabulous raconteuse.’
Miss Powell grimaced. She was the one who had taken one look at Steine and resolved to call her agent.
‘You might have seen her in The King and I. And finally, her regular teammate, Cedric Carbody, who does those screamingly funny skits on the wireless impersonating the headmistress of a girls’ school. What’s the school called again, Cedric?’
The other man pursed his lips and clasped his chubby hands together at his chest. His eyes twinkled with naughtiness. ‘St Winifred’s,’ he trilled, in a well-practised falsetto that had the others spluttering their drinks with laughter. ‘And what a term it’s been!’
The door was flung open. ‘Time, everyone,’ announced a neatly ponytailed young woman in horn-rimmed glasses and a pencil skirt. Her words instigated a flurry of activity: the men stubbing out their cigarettes, adjusting cummerbunds, blowing their noses; the women standing up and straightening their nylons. Steine alone did not spring into action. In fact, he continued to stand on the spot he had first occupied.
‘Inspector Steine! I’m so pleased you accepted!’ said the young woman – who, now he thought about it, he recognised from his weekly trips to the studio in Portland Place. ‘It’s Susan Turner, Inspector. I assist Mr Douglas. It was my idea to ask you to stand in for Mr Muir when all the others dropped out. Don’t worry, you’ll be wonderful. So clever of you to come in uniform! Are you going to keep the cap on, or would you like me to look after it?’
As she led them towards the stage, they could hear the professional warm-up man welcoming the audience to What’s Your Game? and getting them in the mood. ‘So I said to the manager, I said, is that wallpaper flocked? And he said, what do you mean, “flocked”? It’s good for another twenty years!’ Never in Inspector Steine’s life had a gale of laughter sounded quite so terrifying.
Replete with tea and biscuits, Twitten was wondering whether to resume his rounds, but found he was curious about Officer Andy. A couple of radio calls from Hollibon had failed to raise him – although of course there was every possibility he was still busy on the Hassocks job, lying under a car.
‘What was the nature of the call-out?’ asked Twitten, picking up a Garibaldi.
‘Well,’ said Hollibon, excitedly, ‘would you believe it? Only a Thunderbird!’
Twitten tried to look impressed, but didn’t quite manage it. Cars had never interested him. I-Spy Sports Cars was the only I-Spy book he had failed to complete as a child. ‘Look, Peregrine,’ his father would say at Hyde Park Corner, on family educational trips to London. ‘Over there! A Triumph Roadster!’ But although Twitten politely said ‘Gosh, sir’, his heart wasn’t in it. In the end, his mother had let him abandon I-Spy Sports Cars, and devote himself entirely to I-Spy Antique Furniture.
So was a Thunderbird something special?
‘You’d know it was special if you saw one,’ Hollibon assured him. ‘Open-topped, long, shiny; this one’s been imported especially by that famous Yank skater in the Ice Circus, Buster Bond. He got stuck out in Hassocks, see, when his Thunderbird wouldn’t start. Andy was excited to see that car, I can tell you. It’s got a record player built in. It plays LPs!’
Twitten made a mental note to look out for this special car while on his rounds. Buster Bond he’d certainly heard of. The local newspapers had printed several articles about him, on account of his brilliant skating, exciting bachelor status and devastating good looks.
‘So you’re not officially on this beat, then, Constable?’ Hollibon asked.
‘Not officially, no.’
‘That explains it. Constable Jenkins still comes by at half-past ten, you see, and he’s been complaining about you eating all the fig rolls.’
Guiltily, Twitten put down his biscuit.
‘So if you don’t mind me asking, Constable, what are you doing here?’
Twitten didn’t mind at all. ‘Well, firstly, I’m here because I think policemen on the beat build up a valuable amount of knowledge, while their very presence prevents any number of opportunistic crimes.’
‘I see.’
‘But at the same time …’ He faltered, and lowered his voice. ‘Well, at the same time my walking the streets is slightly in the nature of a rest cure, Mr Hollibon. It’s a quiet passage, if you like, after a spell of very high-pressure detective work.’
Hollibon was surprised. Twitten was surely too young to have seen a lot of criminal activity. This ‘very high-pressure detective work’ probably referred to early-morning stake-outs to catch children riding their bikes across the miniature golf course.
‘How high-pressure do you mean?’ Hollibon asked, with a smile.
Twitten wondered where to start. ‘Well, do you remember those two men shot dead at the railway station last month?’
‘Of course.’ Hollibon frowned. ‘But surely you weren’t—?’
‘I bally was, though. There was blood under my fingernails for days. And then I found some in my ear. And do you remember the man shot dead in the theatre, before that, in June?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘I was sitting next to him when the bally gun was fired!’
‘What? But why?’
‘And then there was the boy with his throat cut in the deck-chair, and the man knocked down and killed with a humbug, and the playwright slaughtered with a regimental sword, and the mesmerist fatally shot in a mutual death-struggle with a strong lady on the stage of the Hippodrome!’
Hollibon was horrified. ‘Oh, my God!’
‘I agree, sir.’
‘I mean, sorry to swear, but …’ Hollibon lowered his voice. ‘I mean, bloody hell.’
‘I know. You don’t have to tell me, sir. And you needn’t apologise. Bally, bally hedgehogs is what I often say about it all myself.’
Twitten took a deep breath and composed himself. ‘But you did ask why I was sitting here having this jolly nice cup of tea with you, and that’s the reason. I needed to opt for a lighter time of it. Between you and me, Mr Hollibon, I can’t help feeling that another brutal murder in Brighton by an unknown hand with complicated motives would just about finish me off!’
At eight o’clock, Brunswick said hello to the desk sergeant at the police station.
‘Ah, Brunswick. There was a call for you.’
The sergeant handed over a note. It concerned Barbara. One look at it sent Brunswick racing down the station steps, attractive-multiple-gunshot-wounds-to-the-leg-while-out-of-doors notwithstanding.
‘Agh,’ he said, at every other step. ‘Oof! Ow! Agh!’
Outside, he had a stroke of luck. A police car was sitting idle, the driver having just enjoyed his supper at the canteen across the road (the one Twitten didn’t know about). The driver frowned when he realised Brunswick was wrenching open the passenger door and climbing in. He’d been expecting a few quiet minutes to complete his digestion of a delicious jam omelette.
‘To the hospital,’ Brunswick commanded. ‘Quick as you can.’
A young blonde woman called Barbara Ashley had been found near the children’s playground with life-threatening injuries; the caller had mentioned the words ‘savage attack’ and also (weirdly) ‘milk bottles’. In the victim’s handbag was a Regent Ballroom paper serviette with ‘Sgt Jim Brunswick / Friday / Leg x 6!’ written on it in coral lipstick.
As the car sped eastwards towards the hospital, Brunswick spotted the roof of the Dome and wondered, fleetingly, how the inspector was getting on with his radio appearance.
In fact, against all the odds, Steine was doing well. It turned out that being clueless about the game was giving him an unexpected comedic advantage.
The format of the show was that members of the public turned up to answer questions, and the panel – seated in pairs at tables, behind state-of-the-art microphones almost as big as their heads – politely asked yes–no questions to establish what the person did for a living. ‘Do you follow your profession indoors, Mr Gorringe?’ they might ask; or ‘Does your job require you to wear any protective headgear?’ Traditionally, after a dozen or so questions, one of the ladies would be inspired to ask, in a clipped voice, ‘Mr Gorringe, do you test wellington boots?’ and receive a warm, congratulatory round of applause from the audience, who were always in on the answer.
Before going on, Cedric Carbody had leaned close to Steine and whispered to him, ‘Now, please, don’t look quite so worried, Inspector Diddle Dum-dums.’
Steine could hardly believe his ears. Inspector Diddle Dum-dums?
‘Look, I wouldn’t do this for just anyone, my darling,’ continued Carbody, ‘but I’ve been doing this show for a thousand years and I suppose I know my onions. So here’s a tip, just for little old nervous you. If you can’t think of anything else to ask, say, Are you glad when it’s knocking-off time? It doesn’t elicit any useful information, of course, but trust me, it’s guaranteed to get a laugh.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Positive!’ said Carbody, a smile playing artfully on his lips. ‘No one’s said it for weeks; we save it up for special occasions.’
‘That’s very kind of you.’ Steine thought about it. Knocking-off time sounded somewhat vulgar. ‘Could I change it to going-home time?’ he asked.
‘Well, you could, if you were determined to ruin the joke and not get the laugh that I’m so generously bestowing on you.’
‘Oh. Well, in that case, knocking-off time it is. Thank you very much.’
‘Think nothing of it, sweet boy!’ And then Carbody had emitted his high giggle, making all the others look round and laugh.
So Steine had thanked him again and, as he took his seat under the powerful stage lights, and controlled his breathing, he repeated the question to himself a few times. It helped. It was reassuring to know that when his own turn came to speak, he had something in the bag.
Now, the first subject for the panel’s combined powers of deduction (introduced as ‘Mr Jones of Brighton’) was pretty clearly a fisherman. In fact, Steine recognised him as a fisherman from whom he’d bought mackerel just a few days ago. As each of the ladies asked Jones a question, it was established that he did indeed wear a protective hat on occasion, and that he was engaged in a seaside profession. Steine geared himself up.
But first it was Cedric’s turn, and something extraordinary happened. Looking Steine directly in the eye, he asked, in a playful tone, ‘Tell me, Mr Jones. Are you very glad when it’s knocking-off time?’ At which Jones exclaimed, ‘Blimey, I’ll say!’ and the simple-minded audience roared with laughter.
‘Now, Inspector Steine, welcome to What’s Your Game?’ said Gerry Edlin, warmly. ‘Do you have a question for Mr Jones?’
Steine hesitated. What could he say? Thanks to the motiveless malignity of Cedric Carbody, he had nothing.
‘Inspector Steine?’ repeated Gerry with a little laugh to mask the pause in proceedings. ‘We’re all agog. We are mere amateurs at interrogation, but it’s surely second nature to you.’
‘Indeed it is,’ laughed Steine, trying to ignore the feeling that his internal organs were fighting each other like weasels in a sack.
And then he saw his way out. He took a deep breath.
‘Mr Jones, my question to you is this,’ he said, sternly. ‘In your capacity as a Brighton fisherman, have you ever sold me fish that you knew to be on the turn, contrary to section seventeen of the Shops Act of 1950?’
There was an awkward silence, and time seemed to stop. Gerry’s easy smile froze on his face. Gloria Powell threw herself back in her chair. Lady Pru, sitting beside Steine, snapped a BBC pencil. The audience murmured. And up in the control box, the producer of What’s Your Game? turned to Susan Turner and said, ‘You’re fired.’
But then Jones said, with a grin, ‘It’s a fair cop, guv’nor!’ and the audience exploded with laughter, and started to applaud.
‘Well done, Inspector Steine,’ said Gerry, as Mr Jones got up and respectfully shook each of the panel by the hand. ‘Well, that will teach us not to have a serving policeman on the show! Mr Jones is a Brighton fisherman! This is like working alongside the famous Sherlock Holmes!’
At eight o’clock, back in the AA control centre, the radio came to life, and Hollibon smiled at Twitten. But what they heard was not reassuring, because it wasn’t Officer Andy.
‘Hello, is there anyone there?’ It was the voice of a young boy – a frightened young boy.
Hollibon grabbed the microphone. ‘This is Brighton Control. Who is this? Over.’
He frowned at Twitten, who automatically produced his notebook and licked the tip of his pencil.
‘My name’s Stephen.’
‘Stephen, this is Controller Hollibon.’
‘All right.’
‘Look, first of all, you should not be using this radio. I’ve got a policeman here who’ll tell you the same. You could go to prison for this, my lad.’
He smiled at Twitten, as if to say, This is how to talk to naughty children! But Twitten, unsure, shook his head. It was certainly customary to threaten youngsters with a stretch in Wormwood Scrubs, but this boy on the radio sounded scared enough already.
‘Where’s Officer Andy?’ said Twitten.
‘I was out on my bike and—’
‘Yes, but is Officer Andy with you, please?’ demanded Hollibon. ‘I’d like to speak with him. Over.’
‘I just found him, I think.’
‘Explain what you mean, please. Over.’
‘You’ve got to call somebody. Look, it wasn’t me! I swear it. There’s glass and blood. And milk. There’s blood and milk everywhere.’
Hollibon and Twitten looked at each other. Hollibon put his hands to his face. He had turned white. ‘Oh, Andy!’ he whispered.
‘Hello?’ said the boy, again, and Twitten gently removed the microphone from Hollibon’s grip.
‘Stephen,’ he said. ‘This is Constable Twitten of the Brighton Police. You’re doing very well. It was clever of you to think of using the radio. No one thinks this is your fault, and I promise you won’t go to prison. Please tell me where you are, so that we can come and help.’
‘I think he’s dead.’
And then the boy must have remembered what you were supposed to say when talking on a radio.
‘Over,’ he said, and started to cry.
At the hospital, Brunswick found to his dismay that he was too late. Barbara Ashley, recent runner-up in a grotesquely named beauty competition, had slipped away without regaining consciousness.
The news hit him hard, but possibly not so hard as it was going to hit Constable Twitten. A second murder on the same evening? Poor Twitten really did deserve a spell of peace and quiet after all that death-by-humbug and so on. And now, just ahead of the Bank Holiday, there were two new murders to clear up, both of which seemed to involve people being killed with milk bottles.
And then, to top it all, came a third. Because after the broadcast of What’s Your Game?, as Steine was being hailed as an unlikely comedy hero by Gerry Edlin and the ladies back in the Green Room, the young (and rapidly rehired) Susan Turner had come in and whispered to Cedric Carbody that there was someone to see him – someone who apparently preferred to wait in the alley by the stage door. The others rolled their eyes. Carbody popping outside to meet an admirer was not unusual.
He affected surprise nevertheless. ‘How mysterious!’ he sing-songed. ‘Well, I suppose I must comply.’ He adjusted his trousers, and ran a hand over his thin head of hair. ‘As I always impress on my girls,’ he said, adopting his headmistress falsetto, ‘we must grasp every opportunity that comes our way. You won’t win Best Pony at the county gymkhana, Mildred, if you don’t first saddle up Goldenboy.’
Steine didn’t laugh at this. He didn’t even turn to look. He had seen Cedric Carbody’s true colours. Pouring himself a whisky, he felt the weight of the bottle and briefly wondered what it would feel like to say, ‘Oh, Cedric?’ and then, having got the vile man’s attention, swing it at his head.
This thought would come back to haunt him. Half an hour later, Lady Pru asked where on earth Cedric had got to, and young Susan Turner was dispatched to look for him.
It was while Gerry and the ladies were all delightedly envisaging the scene of debauchery the poor girl might stumble on that they were silenced by something unnerving: the sound of her piercing screams.