Seven

Predictably, the reunion of Peregrine Wilberforce Twitten and Pandora (‘The Milk Girl’) Holden on Saturday afternoon was not a smooth one. In their defence, Twitten and Pandora were young and shy; the last time they’d seen each other, they’d been even younger.

Four years before, when he had taken his leave of the Holden home in Norfolk, Twitten had looked – with his floppy hair, grey flannels and tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows – for all the world like a bright Oxbridge student off to conquer academia and eventually become Home Secretary. Meanwhile Pandora, summoned to the front door by her parents to wave him goodbye, had been, in Twitten’s eyes, a mere enthusiastic schoolgirl in a paint-smeared artist’s smock, with a copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the pocket. She wore no make-up; her eyebrows were slightly inclined to meet in the middle; her long dark hair was in plaits; she wore brown Clarks sandals with ankle socks; and crucially, she was not identified in any way with the dairy industry.

‘Thank you again for having me, Professor and Professor Holden,’ Twitten had said, at the front door, picking up his suitcase. (The joint form of address when a married couple were both professors was problematic for everyone.) And then he had walked away, and the Holdens had laughed and pointed, because under his free arm Twitten was carrying Blakeney – the scamp-ish dog he had arrived with – delivering him back to the long-suffering station-master after he’d been found snoozing again beside the Aga in the Holdens’ kitchen (he had apparently caught a bus). So although the parting was a sad one for Pandora, it was difficult afterwards to be fully tragic about it. Every time she pictured Twitten’s departing form, the sense of teenaged bottomless woe was annoyingly undercut by the memory of that little golden tail waving jauntily beneath her loved one’s arm.

‘Hello, Miss Holden. It’s me, Peregrine Twitten, I wonder if you remember me? I’m a police constable now. I work here in Brighton!’

Twitten had practised this careful overture en route, but as he walked towards Pandora, he was still nervous. What if she didn’t remember him? Backstage before the beauty contest – at around half-past four – she was sitting with Hendy discussing something serious with her head down, while in the background twenty slim young women with not much on, and their hair in tight curlers, milled about in bare legs and white high heels. Pandora, by contrast, was fully clothed in a crisp white blouse and mid-calf polka-dot pink skirt, with a little red scarf knotted at her throat. The image of the Milk Girl might be vivacious and attractive, but it was resolutely clean-living.

At the sight of the two policemen approaching, the underclad beauty contestants scattered – and clattered – as fast as their mad, tarty shoes could carry them. But on hearing Twitten’s words Pandora looked up, clutched at the little scarf, and gasped with such emotion that Henderson instinctively leaped to his feet to protect her.

‘Do you know this policeman, Miss Holden?’

Did she know this policeman? In an instant’s stricken gaze, she assimilated the following about the young man standing before her: his clever face (still adorable), his policeman’s uniform (horribly real), his regulation haircut (revolting), and his expression of total amazement at how much she had changed (hugely gratifying).

‘Peregrine? No!’ she exclaimed. ‘No, no, no! I mean, it can’t be you!’

‘Miss Holden, I could bally well say the same thing. You’re transformed.’

‘Oh, Peregrine!’

Mr Henderson didn’t know what to do. Should he drive this constable away? He had never seen Pandora in such a state, and the sight filled him with concern.

‘Oh, Peregrine!’ she repeated, her eyes wide – and again Henderson dithered. For a man who secretly adored Pandora and hoped one day to marry her, it was highly confusing to see this rapturous expression on her lovely face, caused by another man.

Brunswick, by contrast, was enjoying the scene, and for less complex reasons. He had never properly appreciated before how funny Twitten’s first name was when spoken aloud. He stepped forward and offered his hand. ‘An honour to meet you, Miss Holden. I work with Peregrine. I’m Sergeant Brunswick, but call me Jim.’ How good and solid the name Jim sounded by comparison.

Henderson duly performed his own introductions, but kept them short. ‘Are you all right, Miss Holden?’ he wanted to know. ‘Would you like me to ask these men to come back later? You look upset. You’ve turned a funny colour.’

‘Please, I’m all right.’ She knew she was blushing, but she would have to bluff her way through it. ‘Hendy, I had no idea that Peregrine was in Brighton or that he’d really gone ahead and become a policeman!’ she said, in a rush. ‘I knew that’s what he wanted to do, but what are you doing here, Peregrine? I mean here, at this ballroom, this afternoon? I can’t get over it. It’s too much. Oh, Hendy, don’t just stand there: get them some chairs. I can’t believe it’s you, Peregrine! I just can’t believe it!’

‘We’re investigating the murders, miss,’ said Twitten, quietly, as he sat down. ‘These are early days but—’

‘Did you know I was the Milk Girl?’

‘No, not until today. Actually—’

‘You didn’t recognise me in all the pictures?’

‘No. But—’

‘I thought you would have recognised me. I imagined you thinking, That’s Pandora.’

‘I’m sorry. But about these murders—’

‘Oh, these murders! We’ve been so worried, haven’t we, Hendy? Since we arrived this morning. We were saying – I mean, it’s awful for the people who’ve been killed – but it’s like someone has set out to destroy the good name of milk!’

Twitten would have liked to agree with Pandora, but he couldn’t let this pass.

‘Well, possibly, Miss Holden. But I think mainly he wants to kill people.’

‘Yes, but also to make people think differently about milk! Don’t you see? Poor Hendy is the man who wrote the slogan: “You’ll Feel A Lot Better If You Drink More Milk”. He wants the world to think milk is good for you! He’s taking these murders very badly. It feels somehow personal, doesn’t it, Hendy?’

‘It does.’

‘All the same …’ Twitten began, but stopped. It was obviously pointless to argue with her.

‘I always liked that slogan,’ said Brunswick. ‘By the way, do you happen to know where the girls went?’

Pandora shrugged. She never took much interest in her surroundings. Her job was to turn up with nice clothes on, receive applause and adulation for holding a shiny glass of milk with a straw in it, and do her best to personify in female form an everyday liquid staple of life.

‘So how did you work out that I’m the Milk Girl, Peregrine?’

‘It’s quite interesting, actually,’ he said. ‘One of the victims had a private obsession with unsolved cases, and he had a scrapbook concerning a schoolgirl called Diana.’

‘Oh. Oh, poor Diana.’

‘So you knew about her accident – or whatever it was?’

‘No. Not until today. It was a horrible shock. A reporter told me. She was a friend when I was at Lady Laura Laridae.’

‘Well, in this scrapbook he had pictures of all Diana’s friends at school, and you were in it. You were in a school photograph, aged eleven or so. And there were some snaps Officer Andy had taken of you and your school friends in various locations around Brighton – you might like to see those. But he’d put two and two together about your being the Milk Girl – otherwise I shouldn’t have realised, I’m afraid.’

‘One of your other friends from school will be here tonight,’ piped up Brunswick. ‘June Jackson.’

Pandora’s eyes lit up. ‘Is June here? She must have got married. Her name was June Lester at school.’

‘Stage name, I expect,’ said Brunswick. ‘She wins every contest. Hourglass figure, wavy hair, chalk-white skin. She looks like a film star.’

Pandora smiled. She seemed to have calmed down at last. ‘Oh, June was always the fearless one,’ she remembered. ‘She was our ringleader, like a girl in one of those school stories. She named the five of us the Black Sheep Society!’ Pandora laughed. ‘Oh, I thought she was wonderful. She won all the archery competitions. But I was only at Lady L for a year, you see – while my parents were away collecting all that data in the South Pacific. After that, we lost touch. But we had some extraordinary times, our little gang, sneaking out of school, having midnight feasts and getting into scrapes.’ She sighed. ‘We were so young,’ she said. ‘So confident!’

‘Look, Miss Holden, I feel I have to say this. Part of the reason I didn’t recognise you as the glamorous Milk Girl on all the posters was not only because your appearance has changed so radically.’

‘No?’

‘It was that whenever I thought of Pandora Holden, I’m afraid I assumed she’d be at Oxford by now, in cap and gown, pedalling a bicycle with a Greek–English Lexicon propped up in the basket on the front.’

‘Oh,’ gasped Pandora. On the one hand, it was touching that Twitten remembered her schoolgirl academic dreams; also, that he appreciated the supreme importance to a Classics student of owning a Liddell & Scott. On the other hand, was he criticising her?

And he hadn’t finished yet. ‘You had such strong views about me not squandering my talents by joining the police, I hope you’re not squandering your own, miss. That would be an irony as well as a tragedy.’

‘Oh!’ said Pandora again, biting her lip as tears formed in her eyes.

‘Now hold on,’ said Henderson, but Twitten hadn’t finished. ‘I mean, of course you make a bally lovely Milk Girl, but to be honest, so would plenty of other young women, wouldn’t they?’

Henderson could take this no longer. ‘How dare you talk to Pandora like that? Good God, man, you’ve made her cry!’

‘Have I? Gosh. Miss Holden?’

‘And I’ll have you know that plenty of other young women couldn’t have made such a lovely Milk Girl!’

‘Calm down, sir,’ said Brunswick, taking charge. ‘There’s no need to get worked up.’

‘But your colleague—’

‘I said, calm down, sir, thank you. Blimey, Twitten, did you have to say all that? Can’t you see she’s upset? This young lady values your opinion and you just told her she’s wasting her flaming brain!’

‘Well, as it happens, Peregrine,’ Pandora said, with a sniff, ‘I’m not going to waste my flaming brain much longer. I’m so sorry, Hendy.’

Henderson frowned. What was she saying? What fresh hell was this? Why had today gone so badly in every conceivable way?

‘I wasn’t going to tell you yet, but I am still planning to go to Oxford.’

‘What?’ said Henderson. ‘But you’re the Milk Girl, Pandora.’

‘I know.’

‘You’re by far and away the best thing that ever happened to me, I mean the best thing that ever happened to milk.’

‘I’ve got a place at Lady Margaret Hall for October. I’ve been meaning to break it to you, but I’ve kept putting it off. In the contract I signed, I need give only a week’s notice, you see, so I felt I still had plenty of time.’

‘A week? That can’t be right.’

‘It is, though. My parents had it checked by their solicitor. The Milk Board made it short notice on both sides, presumably so that they could drop me easily. I suppose they didn’t think the Milk Girl would want to give up the job voluntarily.’ She started to cry. ‘But I do, Hendy. I’ve had enough. You’ve been so kind, but I want to stop … all this.’

Henderson glared at Twitten. ‘What have you done?’ he demanded.

‘Me?’ said Twitten.

‘It’s not Peregrine’s fault,’ she blubbed.

‘Yes, it is.’

Henderson put his head in his hands. Pandora sobbed noisily into a pretty white handkerchief. Brunswick pulled an expression of polite concern while darting sideways looks to see if any curvaceous bare-legged young women in high heels had ventured into sight again yet.

‘Well, I say that’s excellent news,’ said Twitten, getting up. ‘Well done, Miss Holden. I don’t know why you’re crying: it’s definitely the right decision. And now we need to talk to June Jackson. Does either of you know where she’ll be?’

June Jackson had been dreading the inevitable visit from the police because she hadn’t yet decided what to tell them. Backstage at the Regency Ballroom, she sat at one of the dressing-room mirrors and concentrated on pencilling her eyebrows, while humming ‘Que Sera, Sera’ to get herself in the correct mood for the show.

All around her, nervous girls in cheap undergarments fought for mirror space and spat inexpertly into little boxes of cake mascara; they shrieked in excitement; they panicked about lost shoes; they wailed when their hair hadn’t curled properly; a few silently wept in corners because of the unbearable pressure, and because they were only fourteen. Over the whole scene hung the throat-catching scent of cheap setting lotion.

But the statuesque June was calm. If you hadn’t known she’d been Sussex County Champion with bow and quiver, you’d have been able to guess from her magnificent bare shoulders. By comporting herself like a film star, and also having an ostentatious tiny agent who brought her orchids and dressed like Al Capone, she had achieved a special status back here, and in all the hubbub, no one jogged her elbow, not once.

But what should she tell the police? Earlier, Tony Sayle had returned from the police station, having answered questions about those ridiculous contest-rigging allegations. Perhaps she should limit herself to talking about those baseless allegations, too: send them off on a wild goose chase. June had hated and distrusted the police ever since the unexplained death of her friend Diana; why should she help them, when they hadn’t helped her? Sometimes she wondered what she would do to the person who was responsible for Diana’s death, if she ever found out who it was. Lashing them to an archery target would be the obvious first move.

But these three – who cared? What had the world lost? A paranoid flat-chested meat-packer. A busybody AA patrolman, always taking intrusive pictures. A mean-minded broadcaster who’d hung around Lady L schoolgirls for years, pretending to make friends with them, but patently collecting material for his ‘comic’ radio monologues. June’s fearlessness – such an asset among fellow schoolgirls bent on adventure – was a rather worrying trait in her now. Her mother often cried herself to sleep, frightened of what June was turning into.

She had already argued with her mother about talking to the police. Mother – who was Mrs Lester, Buster Bond’s respectable landlady in Hassocks – wanted to come forward and report what she’d seen last night. Bond had come off the phone white as a sheet, calling to her in the kitchen, ‘That AA man from last night, Mrs Lester? Can you believe someone killed him? They want to talk to me because I was the last man to see him alive!’ And Mother had whispered to her, ‘Oh, my God, June. Did you hear that? I should call them straight back. Shouldn’t I? Shouldn’t I call them straight back?’

But then Mother was like that: a goody two-shoes always volunteering for unnecessary tasks. June found this intensely annoying. She had much preferred the years when they were apart: herself at boarding school in Brighton; Mother alongside Father at the Embassy in Washington.

But since Father died, she’d had Mother night and day, and they had argued constantly. Last night, when Mother had insisted on telephoning the AA on behalf of Buster Bond, June had said, Let him do it himself, Ma!; when Mother had personally made a cup of tea for Officer Andy, June had argued, What for? He’s just a mechanic! And when Mother felt compelled to report something to the authorities, June had replied, hotly, But it’s nothing to do with you, Ma!

‘But we can’t have the police suspecting dear Mr Bond of anything, darling,’ her mother had pleaded.

‘I don’t see why not. Bond’s a creep, Ma.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I just do.’

‘I wish you would tell me where you go in the evenings, June!’

‘I told you! Secretarial classes!’

‘You get home at two in the morning!’

But it amused June to think of Bond being under suspicion. She’d seen him so many times in the nightclubs around town. He’d even tried to pick her up once, not recognising his own landlady’s daughter underneath all the slap.

‘What I saw might be important, dearest,’ Mrs Lester had protested. But June said no. She didn’t want her mother talking to the police. For one thing, they might just tell her what her beautiful daughter got up to in the evenings.

On such a glorious afternoon, it seems a shame to confine ourselves indoors backstage at the Regent Ballroom. But we are remaining indoors, this time plunging instead into the proper darkness of a cinema auditorium. The editor of the Argus was not wrong when he said the film of The Middle Street Massacre was always showing somewhere in Brighton – usually as a B-feature supporting new releases such as The Yangtse Incident or Doctor at Large. What he didn’t know was that, more often than not, Inspector Steine was in the audience for it – not only because he adored seeing himself depicted by the young John Gregson as handsome, staunch and twinkly, but because (fair point) each screening of this unexceptional film had the potential to be its last.

Often, he was virtually alone in the stalls. Other regular cinema-goers in Brighton being sick to death of The Middle Street Massacre, they timed their arrival with commendable precision in order to miss it. Even when it was snowing they preferred to wait outside until they received the signal that the coast was clear. So it was usually in dusty and echoing auditoriums that Steine got to watch, on his own, all the dismally faded and crackly adverts for local shoe shops and family restaurants, and the trailers for hastily made comedies starring Norman Wisdom. But then – well, then things improved tremendously as the screen darkened and a near-naked muscle-man struck an enormous dimpled gong, and the film he’d been waiting for began.

Steine knew every shot by now: over light woodwind music the black-and-white panorama of the Brighton seafront in early morning, with a calm, sparkling sea lapping on the shiny pebbles; then the central clock tower striking the hour of seven; then a tabby cat jumping up on a low wall, and a woman in a floral apron reaching for a bottle of milk on a windowsill.

Then the music changed to something darker, and a street sign that said, worryingly, ‘Middle Street’ was passed briskly by a man in a hat with his hands in his pockets. Seen walking down the street from behind, the man stopped and stared down. But at what? The music intensified as a close-up showed his puzzlement, then alarm, then horror. At his feet, a dead man with a gun in his hand! Then the brass section blew a discordant Pa-pa-PAAAAH! and up came the legend Croydon Pictures Presents THE MIDDLE STREET MASSACRE, and Inspector Steine prised open his box of Bassett’s Liquorice Allsorts and settled down to be thoroughly entertained.

This Saturday, however, he had not been sure whether to come. After all, there was a vicious murderer at large in Brighton, and visitors were arriving by the thousand. What if he were spotted at the cinema? Even without a murderer to catch, this was a big day for the Brighton police. Holiday-makers who had no rooms for the night would be sleeping on the beaches, endangering public morals. In the absence of municipal car parks, motorists would abandon their Ford Prefects on main thoroughfares and cause obstructions in direct contravention of the Road Traffic Act (1956). And on the subject of obstructions, Steine had also noticed with a twinge of concern on his way to the cinema that a large unauthorised crowd had gathered in the Pavilion Gardens just to stare at a herd of red-and-white cows.

But he soon forgot these distractions once the film began, and barely noticed, either, when he was joined in the stalls by a young man with a notebook who chose a seat near the front.

The Middle Street Massacre wasn’t a truly bad film, to be fair. The comic relief provided by the obtuse Sergeant Brunswood (a depiction that the real Sergeant Brunswick had never quite managed to live down) was cleverly handled, especially his famous cry of frustration about eating flaming ice cream at a time like this. Meanwhile Brighton itself looked marvellous, with shots of the flower gardens and fountains, trolley-buses and coaches, and children building sandcastles – all set in sunny contrast to the darkly dramatic gang tension (fictionalised) building to the famous shoot-out.

Steine loved it that the interior of the police station looked like a slightly bigger version of the Palace of Versailles, and that they gave him a huge Humber car with running boards. But his favourite scene came at the end, when John Gregson viewed the pile of dead gang members in Middle Street through a thick cloud of cordite and declared, ‘I have no blood on my hands this day, just a smidgen of raspberry sauce.’

Today, however, that moment was ruined: when Gregson pronounced those words, there was a shout of laughter from the unknown young man at the front, who then got up as soon as the credits began, closing his notebook and donning his hat.

‘Inspector Steine?’ he said, as he passed by. ‘Is that you?’ The young man leaned close. ‘Ben Oliver from the Argus, sir. Just refreshing my memory for an article I’m planning. How perfect that you’re here too.’

And before Steine could demand an explanation, Oliver had pushed through the heavy swing doors to the blindingly bright afternoon outside, and disappeared.

So, all in all, it had been a busy Saturday afternoon. But at least the Milk Bottle Murderer was taking a rest, wherever he was.

Perhaps the crowds were simply getting too big. On the beaches, families had pitched camp from early morning; by 3 p.m. every deck-chair was in use on the two piers and the Esplanade; at the children’s playground boys and girls excitedly boarded the gentle roundabouts, and got candyfloss in their hair, and lost their sandals, and bawled. On the stage of the Children’s Theatre, a dapper man wearing a striped blazer and waving a cane encouraged children to take part in the talent shows where he was the master of ceremonies. (A placard alongside the stage declared it to be Brighton’s own ‘Have a Go’.) Meanwhile, in the centre of town, Steine had been right to take note of the crowd surrounding those cows outside the Pavilion: it was getting dangerously large. The farmer kept pleading with people to stand back. What the milk-marketing men had failed to provide when devising this grazing-cow stunt was any sort of fencing. They would later have cause to regret this.

When Mrs Groynes checked back with Terence Chambers at the Metropole mid-afternoon, he assured her that all his guests were obediently keeping to their rooms, but he was wrong. One of the regional crime lords had decided he could take it no more, and had slipped through a service door and down some back stairs in search of fresh air, fish and chips, and a bit of female company. Chambers would have been alarmed if he’d known – especially as the escapee was Mr Hardcastle, who, as we know, was irresponsible with weapons, never went anywhere unarmed, and tended towards jumpiness when geographically south of Leeds.

And what of Susan Turner? While everyone at the police station assumed she had gone back to London, Susan had attended the Ice Circus, and thoroughly enjoyed it despite the non-appearance of the famous Buster Bond. In fact, she felt that she’d been fortunate to see this particular performance, and when she emerged from the Sports Stadium mid-afternoon, she couldn’t wait to tell Twitten what she’d learned. Thank goodness she hadn’t gone straight back to London! Twenty-four hours ago, she’d been a contented but taken-for-granted assistant producer on a popular radio panel game. Today she was helping to track down a murderer. She had never felt more alive.

So what had made the afternoon’s performance so special, and so useful? It was the controversial promotion to the starring role of local boy Graham Goodyear.

‘What’s happening?’ Susan had asked, when the audience reacted with equal cheers and boos to the loud tannoy announcement that Graham would be replacing Bond for the afternoon’s show. ‘Why are they booing?’ she asked the woman sitting beside her, who was sensibly wearing a tweed coat firmly buttoned up to the neck (it hadn’t occurred to Susan that it would be cold in here).

‘Aw, because they love that Bond bloke, don’t they?’ said the woman, surprised. ‘It’s him they come to see. He’s lovely.’

‘Oh. But in that case, why are they cheering as well?’

The woman gave her a steady look, and turned briefly to her husband, on her other side. ‘She’s asking why they cheered, Don.’

‘Huh!’ he said, putting his gloves on.

‘You’re obviously not from Brighton, dear. Look, Graham Goodyear’s a local boy, works at the veg market carting sacks of carrots. But he dreams of stardom, don’t he? Or that’s what he told the Argus. The papers love it; call it a Cinderella Story – From spuds to spangles, it’s that kind of thing.’ She turned again to the husband. ‘What was that one we had to look up, Don? Do you remember? That headline about Graham Goodyear? Like From spuds to spangles but something else?’

‘You joking, Em? Why on earth should I remember that?’

The woman turned back, still smiling. ‘Well, I wish I’d never mentioned it now. Anyway, the point is, Graham got called in this year when one of the professional skaters broke his leg – which, funnily enough, happened once before, the exact same thing, two years ago, so it all looks a bit fishy to some people, like lightning striking twice! That’s his mum, look, down the front, waving the little Union Jack. She’s Graham’s biggest fan. She comes to every show, apparently, and cheers and cheers.’

‘Is he any good?’

‘Well, you’ll see. He’s no Buster Bond.’

Another woman leaned in. She’d clearly been eavesdropping. ‘I heard the bloke who broke his leg skidded on some loose peas left at the top of the stairs.’

There was a ripple of laughter.

The first woman turned to her husband again. ‘Did you hear that, Don? They say the bloke what broke his leg skidded on some peas. Like Graham got him out of the way!’

‘Wouldn’t surprise me,’ he replied, lighting his pipe. ‘Many a true word spoken in jest.’

‘And Buster Bond’s probably pinned down under a ton of King Edwards!’ joked another man.

‘Well, I say good luck to Graham,’ said yet another woman, sitting behind. ‘In case you haven’t heard, an old girlfriend of that boy was murdered with a milk bottle yesterday. I say he’s brave to go on.’

‘That young beauty queen was his girlfriend?’ said the first woman. ‘I didn’t know that.’

Again she turned to her husband, but he was deliberately looking in another direction now, so she turned back to Susan.

‘Aren’t you feeling cold, love?’

‘I am, a bit.’

‘Should have brought a blanket. Here, I just thought, though. I bet them two lovebirds – Graham and the beauty queen – I bet they met at that talent show down at the kiddies’ playground. He was always there, Graham was. His mum made him do a turn every week for years.’

‘What, skating?’ asked Susan, puzzled.

‘No, singing! He did it right up till he was fifteen, and they had to bar him in the end, he was so much bigger than the other kids. I bet that beauty queen Barbara used to do a turn down there as well, see; she was just the right type – you know, a proper little show-off. I know her mum. And I’ll tell you what. That AA bloke that got killed as well – he used to play the piano for the kiddies down there and all, didn’t he? He done it for years.’

But before the woman could elaborate, the house lights were extinguished and the orchestra struck up, and everyone stopped talking. In the crowd there was a murmur of anticipation mixed with the rustling of a thousand paper bags of loose sweets.

‘Sugared almond, dear?’ whispered the woman next to Susan. ‘Or a pineapple chunk?’ She rummaged in her handbag. ‘I got some lemon sherbets in here as well.’ And then she exclaimed, ‘From rhizomes to rhinestones! That was it. Thank Christ, it was driving me mad!’

After the ice show, Susan emerged from the Stadium with a bit of a sugar rush, ice-cold legs and feet, a slight headache from all the sheer spectacle, and a clear sense of purpose. Along with everyone else, she had applauded the success of Graham Goodyear with enthusiasm. ‘A star is born, dear,’ commented the woman beside her, as they were standing up to leave. ‘Buster Bond might as well stay buried under all them spuds.’

But Susan’s main emotion was pride: she was going to help Twitten with his inquiries! She was sure no one had mentioned the children’s playground link before – that Barbara Ashley would have sung or danced there, while Officer Andy played the piano. And hadn’t the threatening letter to Cedric Carbody begun: I saw what you done at the children’s playground that time? As fast as she could, she made her way to the police station, only to discover that Twitten and Brunswick were both currently at the Regent Ballroom on Queen’s Road, where the beauty contest was due to take place later on.

It was Inspector Steine she spoke to. He had just arrived back from the cinema, and was (understandably) looking very preoccupied. Why had young Ben Oliver been to see The Middle Street Massacre? What did he mean when he said it was for an article he was planning? Why had he loudly laughed at the best line ever spoken by a policeman over a pile of dead criminals?

‘Is there something the matter, Inspector?’

Steine and Susan were in the outer office, where every surface was covered with Officer Andy’s scrapbook collection.

He considered the question. ‘Yes, I think there might be, Miss Turner. But it’s nothing for you to worry your pretty little – excuse me, I mean there’s nothing for you to worry about.’

‘Oh. Oh, good.’ Susan decided not to take notice of how he had so pointedly swerved away from the compliment. ‘The thing is, Inspector, I’ve got some important information linking the victims of the milk-bottle murders.’

‘Really?’ He smiled indulgently. ‘Well, I don’t suppose your information is important, Miss Turner, but bless you for thinking so. Where did you obtain this so-called important information?’

‘At the Ice Circus.’

Steine threw up his hands and laughed. ‘There you are, then.’

‘Perhaps I should tell Constable Twitten nevertheless. The thing is, it concerns—’

‘Well, if you must,’ he interrupted. ‘You’ll find Brunswick and Twitten at the Regent Ballroom. Ogling the girls in their swimsuits, if I’m not mistaken! Some of them are absolute stunners, I must say. A real class above the sort of drab young woman one meets normally.’

The way Steine managed to insult Susan with virtually everything he said was quite impressive, but she continued to rise above it.

‘Would you like me to tell you first, Inspector?’

‘Me? No. Tell me what?’

‘The information.’

‘Me? No, tell Twitten.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Perfectly.’

‘Then I’ll be off.’

‘Good, good. Thank you, Miss Turner. You’re very …’ Steine couldn’t think of the right word.

‘Helpful?’ she said.

‘I was going to say you’re very nosy. But I suppose helpful would be a kinder way of putting it.’

As she opened the door to leave, Steine remembered something, and called her back. ‘Could you take these with you? Twitten was keen to see them as soon as possible.’

He held up a packet of photographs that had been delivered by the Polyfoto shop’s boy and left with the desk sergeant. It contained eight paparazzi-type pictures taken by Officer Andy in the last two days of his life. Steine had intended to glance at them, but had forgotten. In date order, these showed:

June Jackson trying on a fur coat in a shop on Western Road, under the gaze of a small rat-faced man in a white suit;

a new poster advertising milk, with Pandora’s face on it;

Terence Chambers outside the Metropole, watching his suitcases being unloaded from a car with plainly visible bullet-holes in the wing;

Chambers a few seconds later, still out of doors, being greeted by a woman in a smart dress-and-jacket ensemble;

Chambers and the woman sharing a laugh;

Chambers and the woman, going inside;

Chambers and the woman, nearly gone;

from the other side of the road, the arrival of more large, heavy cars at the Metropole.

Hardcastle didn’t think much of Brighton so far. The fish and chips were double the price of the ones at home in Redcar, and the portion size was laughable. But the main thing was that everywhere was so hot and crowded: the piers were rammed with people; the beach a sea of bodies. Outside restaurants that smelled invitingly of beef gravy there were queues of sunburned people in their holiday clothes standing four abreast! In the end he turned inland, following a sign to the Pavilion, the site of Monday’s meeting. He was curious to see it. But once there he met crowds again – albeit with an unusual free-range dairy-herd focus that, in all fairness, he couldn’t possibly have anticipated.

Lurking outside the Pavilion – next to a sign that read ‘Barber of the Year Contest Bank Holiday Monday, entrance 7/6’ – was a boy of about seventeen. He had evidently just arrived, and was offering leaflets to anyone who would take them while shouting, ‘Ruddy sham! Boycott the contest! Ruddy sham!’ This was Rodolfo’s fiery son Carlo. And as things turned out, it was an unfortunate meeting. If Hardcastle was an armed psychopath with an infinitesimally short fuse, Carlo was a brazen young delinquent who never backed down under threat.

‘What’s this rubbish, lad?’ said Hardcastle gruffly, taking Carlo by the ear. ‘What do you think you’re playing at?’

‘Get off!’ Carlo shook himself free. ‘This fake barbering contest on Monday, mate. It’s a ruddy sham, and I’m not standing for it.’ He raised his voice again. ‘Boycott the contest! Ruddy sham!’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘It smells, that’s why. There’s something fishy going on here, and I want everyone to know.’

Now, any other man in this situation might have considered adopting a placatory tone and offering a ten-bob note, but not Hardcastle, even though the boy couldn’t possibly know the true reason behind the bogus barbering extravaganza.

‘Give me those leaflets. Now! Hand them over. And shut up.’

He made a move to grab Carlo’s ear again, but the boy dodged. ‘No. Get off.’ But before he could shout ‘Ruddy sham!’ again, Hardcastle pulled out a gun and stuck it in his ribs.

Carlo froze. ‘What are you doing? Is that thing real? Help! Help!’

‘What’s happening here?’ said a passer-by.

‘Help!’ repeated Carlo.

‘Hand them over!’ Hardcastle repeated. ‘Now!’

‘Is that a gun?’ yelped somebody.

It was at just this moment that Susan Turner innocently arrived in the Pavilion Gardens, obliged to divert there on account of the crowds on North Street. She dutifully carried the packet of photographs, which she had scrupulously not examined, perhaps because Inspector Steine had just insulted her by calling her nosy, but we will never know for sure. It didn’t matter much, anyway, that she hadn’t take a peek. She certainly wouldn’t have recognised Mrs Groynes in them, consorting with the most dangerous criminal in England, and greeting him as an old friend. She wouldn’t have known that by delivering these pictures to Constable Twitten, she would be placing in his hands all the evidence he needed to bring down the devious criminal charlady who’d been deceiving the police for years.

But Susan never did deliver that evidence. She was thinking about the case quite deeply, and perhaps not paying sufficient attention to her surroundings, when there was an outbreak of agitation in the crowd near the Pavilion.

‘That man’s got a gun!’ someone yelled, and then there was confused movement, and a lot of mooing from startled cows, before people started running in all directions.

‘Stay calm!’ shouted the farmer. ‘Stay calm around the cows!’ But then the gun went ‘Bang!’ as Hardcastle grabbed Carlo’s leaflets, shoved the boy to the ground and raced off.

‘Oh, my God!’ yelled the farmer, as the cows put their heads down and charged with a common goal towards Susan Turner, who alone had not fled the scene or climbed a tree.

She looked up with a frown. What was happening? Today really had been unlike anything in her life up to now.

‘Can I help at all?’ she called, reflexively.

But it turned out that she couldn’t.

‘Mind the cows!’ was the last thing she heard in this world, along with the thunder of hooves.

Yes, thanks to a freakish coincidence – bringing together an out-of-town gangster with no impulse control; a kid with a grudge against a phony hair-cutting contest; a large bank-holiday-weekend crowd avid for novelty; an unfenced herd of cows in the middle of a major resort town; and an entirely unnecessary gunshot – poor Susan Turner was trampled to death by stampeding cattle.

It was a terrible shame. She had not only made a significant breakthrough in the case all on her own; she was also about to help Twitten expose the truth about Mrs Groynes. But on the other hand, we already know that her future life as a put-upon assistant producer at the BBC would have been sad and unfulfilled, so quite honestly who can judge what was best for her in the long run?