Skelton left home in the Bentley just after five-thirty in the morning and picked up his clerk from Belsize Park at seven.
In the car, Edgar chatted happily. Following Mrs Stewart’s instructions, he had enjoyed an ample breakfast of sausages, eggs and toast before taking the camel powders. He had every confidence that, for the first time in his life, he would be able to endure a car journey without fear of what he’d once heard described in court as ‘digestive disemboguement’.
Not long after Jack Straw’s Castle in Hampstead, he stopped chatting.
‘I think those pills have made me a little light-headed,’ he said, and lapsed for a while into silence. 82
Skelton, worried that the camel powders hadn’t worked at all, readied himself for an emergency stop. Then, at Stag Lane Aerodrome, Edgar began to talk again, and the talk was strange. Too fast, too animated, too loud.
‘The chap is selling it at less than half what you’d usually pay for a cubist cocktail cabinet,’ he said. ‘Ooh, look that horse is pure black, I wonder whether he sometimes pulls a hearse. So, I wrote to him asking how he’d come by it and he told me that, excitingly, it has a rather glamorous provenance. Margot Fitzsimmons – you’ve heard of Margot Fitzsimmons, haven’t you? You must have heard of Margot Fitzsimmons. She was involved in that terrible scandal in Chelmsford then pretended to live in a tethered dirigible for a while. Anyway, Margot Fitzsimmons turned her hand to interior design and one of her ex-lovers, possibly the King of somewhere, gave her, as a goodbye present, Cottisham House and Park in Buckinghamshire, which he had reputedly won in a game of backgammon from Sashy Bax Molyneux, the last true Lord of Nogent. And Margot came up with the idea of turning Cottisham House into an ultra-stylish health resort, so she added a sort of Mies Van Der Rohe sunroom at the back, and had all the rooms and bathrooms done out in this rather severe Djo Bourgeois manner with painted aluminium and edges so sharp that some people cut themselves getting out of bed. Those cows are all standing in a line as if they’re queuing for the cinema. Then poor Margot discovered that people didn’t want to be healthy. Or perhaps they were happy to drink 83the lemon juice and have their livers nurtured, but not if it meant losing a leg on the bedroom fittings. Anyway, nobody came to Margot’s health resort, so she sold it to a Hungarian arms manufacturer and this chap in Luton bought up all the fixtures and fittings, including the Czech cubist cocktail cabinet, and advertised them in Modern Design magazine. And I didn’t want to have it delivered in case it got damaged, and it really is very good of you to offer it the safety and comfort of your Bentley. You should give it a name. Some people give their cars names. You should give your car a name. Oh, look, there’s a farmer. Is that his den, do you think? I wonder if he wants a wife?’
He continued in this vein until, just before St Albans, he fell asleep, with his head slumped against the window, which his breath quickly fogged.
Skelton found the address he’d been given. It was on the outskirts of Luton, and an unprepossessing dirty brick warehouse with a dilapidated sign announcing it to be ‘Gillet’s Quality’.
He nudged Edgar awake.
‘Is this it?’ Skelton asked.
Edgar slowly came to, blinked and looked around.
‘Gillet’s,’ he read. ‘That is the name I was given.’
‘Quality what? Is the rest of the sign missing or is that it?’
‘Perhaps it’s a double-barrelled name, Gillets-Quality, like Bowes-Lyon or Clarendon-Gow.’
They got out of the car, found a small door up a couple of steps around the side of the building and knocked. It 84was opened immediately, as if their arrival had been eagerly anticipated, by a wispy young woman who looked about seventeen-years-old. She wore a man’s dungarees and was so tiny she had to bend backward to look up at them. She seemed very afraid.
‘My name is Hobbes,’ Edgar said. ‘I arranged to collect a cocktail cabinet.’
The young woman made no indication that she had heard, or, if she had heard, that she understood the nature of language. There was a hiatus.
Edgar was just about to say, ‘I wonder if I could speak to your father,’ when, in a distant sing-song voice such as one might hear at a séance, she said, ‘Yes, I’m Mrs Gillet. You’ve come about the Czech cubist cocktail cabinet.’
She seemed to be looking not at Edgar or Skelton, but at somebody standing behind them at some distance, and this impression was so vivid that Edgar glanced over his shoulder just to make sure.
After another short silence, she abruptly turned, said, ‘Follow me,’ and set off down a long corridor, galloping like a fawn.
Skelton and Edgar had almost to run to keep up.
The corridor smelled like the inside of a neglected shoe.
Mrs Gillet turned left, cantered a few more paces, then pushed open a wide door that gave access to the main warehouse.
It was a vaulted room big enough for three or four trains to find a home and was piled high with every kind of furniture, both domestic and commercial. A grand piano lay 85on its back across two roll-top desks. A marble mantlepiece stood between a ringer and a brass bedstead.
Skelton looked suspiciously up at a mahogany dining table, some way above his head, balanced on four dining chairs, which in turn were balanced on a sofa. He was sure he saw it teeter.
He and Edgar edged their way, being very careful not to touch anything, but Mrs Gillet scampered off down a colonnade fashioned from rolls of linoleum.
Skelton and Edgar followed. She turned left. They reached the turning just in time to see her turn right and realised that unless they got a move on, they would lose her and thus lose themselves in the maze of wardrobes and tallboys. They scampered.
Eventually she stopped and turned to face them.
‘It’s up there,’ she said, and pointed.
There were two partner desks, an oak one standing on a mahogany one. These were piled with a ramshackle jumble of dining chairs, their legs intertwined in a way that may have made them as secure as the Forth Bridge but didn’t look like it. Then, balanced on top of the chairs was the Czech cubist cocktail cabinet.
‘Should we get a ladder?’ Edgar asked.
‘No need,’ Mrs Gillet said, in a half-whispered singsong. She put one foot on the mahogany desk, then, like Mallory making his doomed ascent of the North Col, began to mount the chairs. Skelton and Edgar took a few paces to the side hoping that, if the chairs came down, they 86would not bring the adjacent wardrobes and sideboards with them.
Miraculously, she reached the top without dying. Once there, she sat astride two of the more secure looking chairs, took a length of rope from the pocket of her dungarees, tied one end to the cocktail cabinet, and lowered it to their waiting hands below.
Mrs Gillet’s descent, as is so often the case, was more perilous than the ascent.
Skelton couldn’t bear to watch and instead examined the cabinet. It was, if anything, pointier than the picture had promised, with misshapen wooden tetrahedrons sticking out at odd angles, interrupted by facets of glass and Bakelite. It had doors, but the layout of shelves the inside might conceal didn’t bear thinking about, so there was no temptation to open them. Anyway, his first instinct, that it had been designed with the specific intention of having somebody’s eye out, was confirmed and he wondered whether there was a big glass eye industry in Czechoslovakia that needed a boost.
He didn’t say anything, though, because when he looked up, he saw that Edgar was gently touching the Bakelite. There was love in his eyes. Mrs Gillet slipped off the mahogany desk and stood with them, the three of them in silent reverence.
‘It has a weight to it,’ she said, in the same sing-song voice, ‘but not as much weight as you might think it has and certainly not as much as you couldn’t carry it.’
‘Of course,’ Edgar said. And picked it up. 87
Mrs Gillet cleared her throat. ‘It was, I believe,’ she said, ‘to be a cash transaction.’
Edgar put the cabinet down again and took an envelope from his pocket into which he had already counted out the money. Skelton wondered how much but there was no telling from the shape of the envelope whether it was 2s or £20.
Again, they lifted the cabinet and walked a few paces. Then the same thought struck both of them at the same time and they put it down.
‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to show us the way out,’ Skelton said.
Mrs Gillet nodded and cantered off. Skelton and Edgar grabbed the cabinet and gave chase.
Outside, Edgar carefully wrapped the thing in the tartan rugs that Skelton kept in the car and laid it on the back seat, packing it with more blankets to be sure it wouldn’t roll or fly into the air should the car suddenly stop.
‘How old do you think she was?’ Skelton asked, when they were on the road again.
‘Mrs Gillet? Hard to say,’ Edgar said. ‘Sixteen, seventeen. I can’t believe she’s more than twenty-one.’
‘Do you think Mr Gillet’s a cradle-snatcher, then, or are they two extraordinarily resourceful youngsters?’
‘Perhaps they inherited it from his father.’
‘Could be,’ Skelton said. ‘I can’t think life expectancy in a place like that is much to write home about. The father’s probably in there still, buried under a mound of gas cookers.’ 88
Skelton drove off.
By the time they got to Streatley, Edgar was asleep again.
F. E. Holland’s office was in a street too narrow for the Bentley. Skelton parked where he could, and nudged Edgar awake.
‘It’s just up there,’ he said.
Again, it was a moment before Edgar regained full consciousness.
He got out of the car. ‘Will it be all right, do you think?’ he asked.
‘What, the car?’
‘The cabinet. It’d only take a moment for a thief to—’
‘Because every man, woman and child in Bedford is ever watchful for an opportunity to steal a Czech cubist cocktail cabinet.’
Edgar looked up and down the street to make sure that his chief’s sarcasm was not misplaced.
They found the office in a shabby building up two flights of stairs covered in torn lino. Holland greeted them at the door. A young man – under thirty, anyway – he looked as if he could do with several decent dinners, custard puddings to follow and something for his nerves. His pale hands fluttered.
‘Excuse the mess,’ he said and gestured helplessly at the papers, files, books, cups, plates and ashtrays that covered every surface. ‘Mrs Roebuck usually keeps things orderly, but she’s had something wrong with her womb since the 89beginning of September, so I’m having to manage myself. Or rather, I’m failing to manage.’
He began to clear off a couple of chairs but glanced at one of the files he was moving and was immediately absorbed in its contents. A good while went by before he remembered that he was not alone.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ he said. He put the file in a prominent position on his desk so as not to forget it and carried on clearing. ‘One of my Wednesday evening cases. I do a Poor Man’s Lawyer stint up at the settlement two evenings a week.’
Skelton knew about the Bedford Settlement. It was a place where local teachers, lawyers and other adepts of one sort or another offered free evening classes and dispensed advice for those who asked. Skelton had worked in a similar place in Manchester during his pupillage. On Tuesday nights he did a weekly ‘surgery’, sitting in a cramped little office with a long line of supplicants queued outside: wounded soldiers and war widows having trouble getting their pensions, industrial compensation claims, rent disputes, domestic ding-dongs – all sorts. Skelton had found his weekly dive into the great pool of human misery exhausting and couldn’t imagine the strain it must put on Holland, who seemed a good bit less resilient than he’d ever been.
When Skelton and Edgar were sat down in approximately clutter-free comfort, Holland returned to his desk but found himself unable to resist another peep into the file he’d left there. 90
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Bailiffs are coming for Mr and Mrs Willis this afternoon. Was sure it was later in the week. Can’t have them homeless. You couldn’t lend me three pounds, could you?’
‘Er …’
‘Only, I’ve left it a bit last minute, so the only thing I can do for now is pay their rent for them and I won’t have time to get to the bank. It’s …’ Holland referred to the file, ‘three pounds fifteen and six they owe, so …’ He turned, took a cash box from a shelf behind him and opened it. ‘Yes, I can do the fifteen and six.’ He lifted the tray out of the cash box. ‘Oh, as you were. There’s a small fortune down here. Riches beyond the dreams of avarice. Must be …’ he counted some notes, ‘seven pounds. And Johnny shall have a new ribbon to tie up his bonnie brown hair. Right, where were we? Yes, of course, Tommy Prosser.’ He fumbled through the mess on his desk looking for the file, found it, scraped the jam off it, ate the jam and licked his fingers clean. ‘You’re seeing him at, when is it, eleven? Well, good luck with that.’
‘Is he a difficult man to deal with?’ Skelton asked.
‘The sad truth of the matter, Mr Skelton, is that Tommy Prosser got stuck with me as his solicitor because all the halfway decent Bedford solicitors refused to have anything to do with him. He’s not a very pleasant man at the best of times, but then, at the worst of times he is prone to these outbursts.’
‘Outbursts?’ 91
‘Outbursts. Of rage. Usually violent rage and often very violent rage, indeed. And, I’m sorry to say that, in the past, when he’s found himself in trouble with the police, his rage has been directed against those who are trying to help him as much if not more than his enemies. He seems to nurture a particular dislike for solicitors.’
‘He attacked his solicitor?’
‘Over the years he’s attacked three solicitors, putting one in hospital.’
‘Has he attacked you?’
‘Not yet, no. But I’m sure it’s only a matter of time. Now, you should be all right seeing him in prison because if they know what they’re doing they’ll have him heavily restrained. They’ll most likely have put something in his tea as well. A splash of bromide can be wonderfully soothing.’
‘How is he in court?’
‘Atrocious. Surly, angry, obstructive. And then, you have to take into account the poor man’s physical appearance. Did you ever read Great Expectations? No, neither did I, but there’s supposed to be a terrifying convict in it called Magwitch. People have said that Tommy Prosser makes Magwitch look like Little Lord Fauntleroy. It’s why I approached you, Mr Skelton. And why I thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking on the case. The jury will be very much inclined to start climbing out of the box screaming “guilty” as soon as Prosser’s brought into court and it will not be easy to change their minds even though, as I’m sure you’ll agree, the prosecution case is nonsense. They will need persuasive 92argument delivered with compelling authority with the oratorical skills of Lloyd George or Abe Lincoln – the kind of thing you’re a dab hand at, Mr Skelton. And, the main thing is, you see, that Tommy Prosser is a horrible, horrible person, but I don’t believe for a moment that he killed Harold Musgrave.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Speak to him. You’ll see.’
A young man was standing by the Bentley, looking this way and that.
Edgar, convinced he had designs on the Czech cabinet, almost ran towards him.
The young man looked up, stamped on his cigarette end and smiled.
‘Mr Skelton, Mr Hobbes,’ he said. ‘Chester Monroe, Bedford Weekly Illustrated.’
He was what Skelton’s mother would call a ‘tyke’ and his father ‘a cheeky little bugger’. Fresh open face, wide-spaced eyes, froth of red-gold curls, waistcoat with lapels and pearl buttons, double Albert watch-chain, garish tie.
Skelton, a little warily, shook his hand.
‘Aah,’ he said, ‘you’re the chap who got the body identified before the coroner had even seen it.’
‘All in a day’s work,’ Monroe said. ‘You’re due up the prison at eleven, yes? See Tommy Prosser.’
‘Yes.’
‘Got time for a cup of tea and a bun first? My treat.’ 93
Skelton exchanged a look with Edgar. It was a quarter past ten and both were starving.
Monroe took them to a tea room on the high street, swapping hellos with six or seven people along the way. The waitress greeted him with a giggle. There was a history of flirtation.
Tea and toasted teacakes were ordered.
‘So, how did you do it?’ Skelton asked.
‘Do what?’
‘Get all that information about Musgrave so fast?’
‘Very straightforward, Mr Skelton. First I heard was when Myatt – the copper at Great Dunworth – sends a message to the Bedford Police station and I gets a tip off from a pal of mine who works there. So, I gets down there on my Triumph. The car had been dragged just off the road into a field. Easy enough to find and the number plate had an AC prefix, so I knew it was a Warwickshire reg and I could get the owner’s name off that but, as it turned out, I didn’t need to, ’cos in the back of the car I found some vacuum cleaner bits, all burnt up, but you could still see the name, Auto-Vac-It, Coventry. So, after I’d finished delivering Myatt’s message to Northampton, I rode up to the Auto-Vac-It factory and had a chat with a chap called Milner who said it had to be Musgrave’s car. He was actually quite put out by the poor man killing himself – as we thought he’d done then – but he wasn’t surprised. And he told me about the bigamy charge, and the debts and fixed me up with a photo. Bob’s your uncle.’ 94
‘It’s a very impressive piece of work,’ Skelton said.
‘The journalist will always be first with the story if he follows some simple rules: get all the news; don’t stop with half of it; run down every clue; work rapidly; don’t putter but persevere until you get what you were sent for; don’t come back empty-handed; above all, be resourceful in devising ways and means of getting news.’
‘Is that what your editor tells you?’
‘Nah. All he ever says is, “Here’s a shilling. Take the bottle down to Hector’s for a refill.” He practically lives on pints of port out the barrel. Nah. It’s from my Bible. Writing for Newspapers by John Spencer Meyer of the University of South Dakota. The Americans are miles ahead of us in the newspaper business. English newspapers report the news they think is important. That’s not going to sell papers, is it? What you have to print is the news the reader thinks is important. You have to think about the things ordinary people want to read about. “Always get the human-interest angle. Never forget, people like a good fight, whether it’s in politics, business or sport. Petty disagreements make them yawn. Don’t neglect children in the news; though small, they make a big appeal. Keep on the lookout for good stories of animals.”’
Through the window they could see workmen with ladders removing bunting from lamp posts.
‘There’s an example. Last Friday, the prime minister came here. Spoke at the Corn Exchange. Times sent a bloke up, Herald, all of them. Did he say anything ordinary people 95would want to read about? No, he did not. Did he do anything ordinary people would want to read about? No, he did not. Was it really worth sending them blokes from The Times and the Herald all the way from London? No, it was not. He’ll lose the next election.’
‘MacDonald?’
‘Course he will. Mussolini, Hitler, they’ve got the right idea. You get people saying Mussolini’s just a dumb big bruiser and Hitler’s a noisier version of Charlie Chaplin, but that’s the point, isn’t it? They are recognisable characters, like Felix the Cat or who’s that woman does the banana dance in Paris?’
‘Josephine Baker,’ Edgar said.
‘That’s the one. Mussolini and Hitler, they do things and they say things ordinary people want to read about, but more important than that, they are the sort of characters ordinary people want to read about. And that’s why they’re in the papers all the time, isn’t it? Not just the Italian and the German papers, neither. In the Mail and the Express and The Times.’
The tea arrived. Edgar poured. Monroe waited until he’d finished, then, ignoring the tea, leant back in his chair and said, in a voice loud enough to turn heads, ‘So, Tommy Prosser, is he going to swing?’
‘I’m afraid it would be most unethical of me to make any comment on the case at all,’ Skelton said.
‘You don’t think he did it, then?’
‘As I say, for me to make a comment—’ 96
‘So, you do think he did it, then. What’s it like defending a man you think is guilty?’
Skelton smiled. ‘I’m not sure your line of questioning would be allowed in court, but you could have been a hero of the Spanish Inquisition.’
Monroe took this as a compliment and buttered his teacake with a flourish. ‘You know it’s the first story I got in the nationals, don’t you?’
‘What, the burning car? No, I didn’t. Congratulations.’
‘Frank Chettle’s offered me a job.’
‘Who’s Frank Chettle?’
Monroe rolled his eyes – the ignorance of some people. ‘Frank Chettle,’ he said, ‘editor of the Daily Graphic. Third biggest circulation. Be the top now I’m working for ’em.’ Monroe grinned at his own immodesty. ‘Frank’s giving me a trial. I’m to keep running with the burning car story. Come up with a new angle every day. So, obviously, you’re gonna be the star of the show.’
‘What?’
Skelton felt the way he did at school when Dennis Lawley’s gang was looking for people to give his special Chinese burn and saw him hiding behind the bins.
‘Well, co-star, anyway. There’s Musgrave, the bigamist, up to his ears in debt and lord knows what else. Plenty of human interest, there. But he’s dead. Then there’s Tommy Prosser – not sure whether he’s the dastardly villain or the victim of cruel injustice. And then there’s you, solid family man, guardian of the truth, saviour of Mary Dutton and 97Ibrahim Aziz. But can the “Conjuror of the Courtroom” do the same for Tommy Prosser? “Conjuror of the Courtroom” isn’t my best, I’ll come up with something better. Maybe do an interview with your wife. Mila, is it? And don’t neglect the children, photo of you playing with Lawrence and Elizabeth. “The family man”. Have you got a dog?’
Skelton swallowed his teacake. ‘I …’ a moment’s choking. ‘How do you even know I have a wife and children?’
‘Press cuttings. Couple of years ago when you were the “Latter Day Galahad” doing the Hannah Dryden case.’
Two years earlier, Skelton had been involved in a libel case, the so-called ‘Scandal of The Decade’, brought by Hannah Dryden, a society hostess, against her ex-husband. The case gave him his first taste of the headlines when, to his embarrassment tinged with secret and guilty delight, he had found himself as famous, according to Edgar, as Dolores del Rio. Journalists on the Express and Mail had spared no effort in ferreting details, mostly erroneous, about his wife, children, parents and school. It was Hannah Dryden herself who had christened him, ‘The Latter Day Galahad’. He had hoped that, with the passage of time, it would all have been forgotten.
‘One has to …’ he said, ‘I don’t think I can stress this too emphatically … one has a duty when called to the bar to uphold the dignity of the legal profession and of the law in general.’
‘Of course, of course, of course, of course,’ Monroe said. ‘And I am not and would never suggest anything that might 98compromise that dignity. Take it from me, Mr Skelton, I have more respect for the law and for its officers than any man on earth.’
Monroe saw, out of the window, a young woman walking past. He gave her a wave and her friendly wave back made him smile, almost blush. Then he turned back to Skelton and tried to pick up the threads.
‘So,’ he said, ‘have you got a dog? A dog’s always better than a cat, isn’t it? They do tricks sometimes. Although having said that, I did once know a cat who could jump up on the wall and work the door knocker when he wanted to be let in.’ He saw from the expression on Skelton’s face that good stories about animals would not be forthcoming. ‘Listen, I can see you’ve got your apprehensions about being the star of the show, but I promise you can trust me always to put you in a good light.’
Skelton was still frowning.
‘The other thing you have to think about is the jury,’ Monroe went on. ‘They will, believe me, take a lot more notice of things said by somebody with a bit of zip whose picture they’ve seen in the paper than they would of somebody they’ve never heard of, like John Sankey or Gordon Hewart.’
John Sankey was Lord Chancellor. Gordon Hewart was Lord Chief Justice. Both were distinguished and scholarly gents, but neither possessed an iota of zip. Monroe certainly knew his stuff.
Edgar offered his Gold Flake. Monroe refused and took, from his waistcoat pocket, a packet of Lucky Strike, 99American cigarettes in a soft packet. Tapping the top of the pack magically made a single cigarette pop up. He took it in his mouth and lit it with an American lighter. An exotic smell filled the cafe, not like Turkish or French tobacco, a smell all of its own.
Edgar wrinkled his nose with a sour expression.
‘It’s toasted,’ Monroe said.
‘What?’ Edgar said.
‘It’s what it says on the advertisements. “It’s toasted”.’
‘What is?’
‘The tobacco. I think.’
‘I’ve heard they often like to put butter and marmalade on it, too,’ Edgar said.
Monroe looked at his cigarette. There was a precious moment before he realised that Edgar was pulling his leg.
‘I didn’t like him,’ Edgar said, as they approached the prison gates.
‘I gathered that,’ Skelton said.
‘Did you?’
‘A little bit bumptious, perhaps.’ He was about to add ‘But harmless enough’ but thought better of it.
Their entry into the prison was the usual procession of register signing, document showings and interminable unlockings and relockings, with the coalhouse smell of the outside of the prison being gradually replaced by the smell of recently disinfected lavatories the nearer to the cells you came. 100
The warder told them that he would stay with them in the cell while they interviewed Prosser, that they weren’t to get too close and there would be nowhere for them to sit. Chairs, he explained, could be used as weapons and might present an obstacle if they needed to leave the cell in a hurry.
The sense of danger seemed to rouse Edgar from his camel powder drowsiness.
‘Is he really that dangerous?’ he asked.
‘Worse,’ the warder replied.
It was the gloomiest cell Skelton had ever seen. Though it was moderately bright outdoors, in here the colours were faded to grey and there was a chill in the air as if a storm was brewing.
One look at Prosser was enough to tell you that no jury would acquit. Skelton did not know the derivation of the phrase ‘plug-ugly’ but was fairly convinced that the ‘plug’ – whatever it was – must have resembled Tommy Prosser. There was nothing inherently evil there. In repose, the expression could almost have been described as benign, but it was so rarely in repose. Mostly it bore an expression of suspicious rage, pinched, the brows drawn together, the mouth tight closed, the eyes black darting dots. He had the frame of a welterweight wrestler just on the verge of going to seed. The strength was still there, but the muscles had acquired a layer of fat.
Most of all, he put Skelton in mind of photographs he’d seen of John Daniel, the gorilla owned, ten years or so earlier, by a Miss Alyse Cunningham. The beast had, 101apparently, lived in her house, slept in a proper bed, washed itself in the bathroom and played nicely with local children. An old Africa hand he’d met at some do, however, had told him that if there was a shred of truth in Miss Cunningham’s tales, she was a very lucky woman. The gorilla is indeed the gentlest of animals until it is riled. Then it will tear you limb from limb. The difficulty is that they’re unpredictable buggers. You can never be quite sure what might make them angry. All the great apes are the same. The Africa hand had once known a chimpanzee who was essentially civilised but would severely injure anybody who wore squeaky shoes. Hated the sound.
Prosser looked up when the door was opened but looked down again when he saw that no food was being brought and stared at his boots. Grey, unpolished boots with no laces, the leather wrapped around the shackles that held his ankles. Heavy chain held his wrists, too.
‘Good morning, Mr Prosser,’ Skelton said, brightly. ‘My name is Arthur Skelton. I’m the barrister who will be representing you in court and this is my clerk, Edgar Hobbes.’
Prosser snorted quietly to himself without looking up.
Edgar took out his notebook and fountain pen, then put it away, worried that the nib could be used to stab, and took out a blunt pencil instead. ‘Mr Skelton is here to help you in court,’ he said. ‘In order to do that, he needs to ask you some questions.’
Prosser shifted his weight. The warder, suspicious 102of any movement, advanced a little, brandishing his truncheon. Prosser sat back and stared at his boots.
‘There are just a few matters I’d like to clear up,’ Skelton said, ‘a few questions, and it would be a great help to your case if you would answer them as honestly as possible.’
Without looking up, Prosser said, ‘They take your bootlaces.’
Skelton said, ‘Yes,’ and waited for Prosser to say something else. He didn’t. ‘You were in the bank changing a five-pound note into notes and coins of smaller denomination.’
No answer.
‘Can you tell me how you came by the five-pound note?’
No answer.
‘In your statement to the police, you said that you got the five-pound note by selling a car that you had stolen. But you refused to reveal the make of the car or where you stole it from?’
Prosser stared at his boots.
‘I’m sure you’re aware, Mr Prosser, that if we’re to make a case in court, the more evidence we can produce to prove you’re telling the truth, the more likely it is that you’ll be acquitted of this terrible charge and set free.’
Silence.
‘Then you said that you bought the two-gallon can of petrol because you had stolen another car but that it had run out of petrol and you needed to deliver it to the man who’d bought it. But, again, you refused to give the name of the person who bought the car.’ 103
‘I’m not a nark.’
‘You must realise, Mr Prosser, that though this man you refuse to name would face a charge of receiving stolen goods, it is a charge that might well be dismissed. And even if your purchaser were to be so charged and found guilty, the sentence would probably be no more than a small fine. Whereas … I’m sure I don’t need to spell out the gravity of the charge you face.’
Skelton waited a full minute. Eventually Prosser looked up, perhaps to see if they were still there.
‘Could we talk about the starter handle?’ Skelton said.
The chains rattled as Prosser shifted his feet. The warder tensed.
‘A man came to see me,’ Prosser said. ‘We had a set-to. I had to see him off.’
‘You struck him with the starter handle? Who was this man?’
Prosser’s body tensed and his breathing quickened. An outburst seemed imminent. The warder checked that the cell door was still open, ready for a speedy exit, and held his truncheon in the ‘I am about to strike’ position.
‘Did you kill Harold Musgrave?’ Skelton asked.
Prosser stared at his boots again. Skelton waited another full minute in silence, then nodded to the warder. They were done.
He and Edgar stood, and the warder began to usher them out. Then Skelton turned back and, dropping the barrister act said, ‘I don’t think they’d let you have a bottle 104of Scotch, but I could do you twenty fags.’
Prosser looked up. Edgar took out a twenty pack of Gold Flake and started to hand them over, but the warder stopped him, took the cigarettes and threw them for Prosser to catch.
‘Can he have matches?’ Skelton asked.
‘I can give him a light if he wants one.’
Prosser peeled the cellophane from the cigarette packet and said, ‘Can I ask a question?’
Skelton wished he could sit down or at least draw a little closer. ‘Of course.’
‘I know I’ve had it. Nobody’s going to believe nothing I say, so, what I say is best get it over quick. If I just say I done it, if I just tell you I done it, now, and tell the screws and the governor, would that be it? Can they just take me out and hang me? Just here. Take me outside and hang me?’
‘I’m afraid you’d still have to go to court.’
‘In court, then, if I say I done it, would they just take me out and hang me? I’d just as soon get it done with.’
‘Listen,’ Skelton said. ‘There’s a good chance, if you behave yourself in court, if you answer the questions properly – not like you’ve just been doing – there’s a good chance I can get you off. You can go free.’
‘Never going to happen. They’ll have me, whatever.’
‘I’ll come and see you again before the trial. All right?’
Prosser managed to manipulate a cigarette into his mouth and gestured to the warder to give him a light.
It’s always impossible to know how things can happen so quickly. In less than half a heartbeat, Prosser had his chain 105wrapped around the warder’s neck and had somehow taken possession of the truncheon.
‘Don’t do nothing,’ he said. ‘Or I’ll pull his head off.’
The warder was choking, red in the face. Prosser picked him up and made for the door. Skelton and Edgar stepped back to let him pass, but not quite fast enough. Prosser pushed and Skelton fell, half-sitting, against the iron bed.
Edgar helped him up. They looked out into the corridor. Prosser had the warder on the floor, next to another door. With his free hand he was banging on the door with the warder’s truncheon. Prosser shouted, ‘Open it or I pull his head off.’ An electric alarm bell began to ring.
The door opened and six or seven warders appeared all armed with truncheons. They beat the prisoner on the head, the neck, about the waist and the legs. He dropped the warder and fought back, spitting and screaming obscenities. More warders appeared. He was hopelessly outnumbered, but still it took a good two minutes to bring him down and even then the warders did not let up, smashing their truncheons against the backs of his knees to make sure he didn’t get up again. They pulled his arms tight behind his back, the chain biting into his belly and got handcuffs on.
Prosser, still conscious, looked back at Skelton. The anger had gone out of him and instead his face wore an expression of terrible, pleading despair. His eye caught one of his boots, which had come off in the struggle. He tried to wriggle towards it, to reach it, perhaps with his mouth. One of the warders put a foot on his chest to hold him still. 106
A man in a suit, possibly an assistant governor, arrived, saw Skelton and Edgar, apologised profusely that they had been subjected to such a dreadful misadventure and hurried them out of the prison.
In contrast to the gloom, the pale November sun felt like midsummer in Nice.
‘Are you sure you’re all right, old chap?’ Edgar said. ‘You took a nasty tumble.’
‘You’re talking to a man who has recently been trampled by elephants.’
They sat on a bench built into a churchyard wall. Edgar took out his cigarettes. Skelton filled his pipe.
‘Can you remember, was there anything in the brief about Prosser having a family?’ Skelton asked.
‘Not as I remember.’
‘What about his house? Is it a cottage or a hovel or what?’
‘Is it important?’
‘D’you think anybody’s ever shown him a scrap of kindness or friendship?’
‘Oh, lor’,’ Edgar said.
‘What?’
‘I’ve warned you about caring so many times. It’s unprofessional. Worse than that, doing it for fifteen guineas is downright indecent. But Honest Arthur from Leeds doesn’t see it like that, does he?’ Edgar looked at his chief. Had he gone too far? It is customary for clerks to afford a certain respect to those they serve. ‘Honest Arthur 107from Leeds,’ was bordering on insolence. Skelton smiled. Flattered.
Edgar continued. ‘I’ll admit that in some circumstances it is difficult not to care, but Tommy Prosser’s a brute. He’s been in trouble with the police ever since he was seven years old.’
‘Well, so were you for that matter.’
‘Ah, but I reformed,’ Edgar said.
‘Because somebody cared.’
They smoked for a while in silence.
‘I wonder if he’s ever had anything he could care for.’
‘He seems quite fond of his boots,’ Edgar said.
They got back to the car.
‘Are the camel powders still working, do you think?’ Skelton asked.
‘I think so,’ Edgar said. ‘I should be all right. As long as I don’t get too dozy again.’
They drove off. Skelton wondered aloud what would happen to Prosser if he was acquitted and guessed that it would only be a matter of time before the police took him in for some other crime and kept doing it until they found one that would stick and either put him away for a long time or send him to the gallows. But Edgar, before they reached the outskirts of town, was snoring.