CHAPTER FOUR
Clubland isn’t exactly my natural habitat. I’m with Groucho Marx on joining clubs. And I was making Groucho’s point pretty amply for him by turning up at the pillared portals of the East India Club in a crumpled jacket and creased shirt. (Well, I was no better at packing than I was at ironing.) At least my tie looked the biz. (Actually, it was Rupe’s tie, but let’s not quibble.)
Charlie Hoare was waiting for me in the lobby. A mop of grey hair and a fuzz of slightly less grey beard gave him an aptly maritime look. But the uncrumpled navy-blue suit, the discreetly striped tie and the copy of the Financial Times wedged under his arm, folded open at the commodities page, declared him to be a man of the City. He fixed me with a no-nonsense stare and shook my hand so firmly that all feeling fled my little finger.
‘Lance?’
‘Yeh. I—’
‘Call me Charlie. After all, this is an informal meeting. Let’s keep it that way.’ (It wasn’t clear to me what other way it could be.) ‘We’ll go upstairs.’ He led the way, chuntering on as we climbed the plush-carpeted treads. ‘Handy refuge from the office, this place. And a refuge is what I seem to feel the need of more and more. I offered to put Rupe up for membership, but he wasn’t interested. Not very clubbable, our Rupe, but a good sort, even so. Sound, through and through. At least, I always thought so.’
We reached a large second-floor room, where a few members were dozing the afternoon away beneath gilt-framed likenesses of bewigged nabobs. Hoare commandeered a pair of armchairs either side of a low table next to one of the windows, through which I could see the yellowing leaves of the plane trees in the square, hanging limply in the gathering dusk.
‘Would you like some tea? Or coffee?’
‘Coffee would be nice.’
‘Or something a little stronger, perhaps?’
‘Too early for me.’
‘Really? Oh well. Probably best.’ He waved a waitress over and ordered a pot of coffee, then leaned towards me across the table, rubbing his hands together as if settling to business. ‘So, you were at school with Rupe.’
‘And university.’
‘Sounds like you know him very well.’
‘I do.’
‘What line are you in, Lance?’
‘I’m sort of between lines.’
‘Can be a dangerous place that – between the lines.’
‘How long have you been in shipping, Charlie?’ I asked, deciding to ignore the faint hint of a threat in his smiling remark.
‘Far too long. But let’s waste no time on my inglorious career. Eurybia use me as a kind of . . . troubleshooter. Which brings us to Rupe.’
‘Is he in trouble?’
‘Who knows? But his family must think he might be. You too.’
‘We simply can’t contact him.’
‘Nor me. Nor anyone, as far as I can tell. Characteristic behaviour, would you say, on your old friend’s part – dropping out of sight?’
‘No.’ That wasn’t entirely true. He’d never done it before, certainly, but when Hoare had asked me the question I’d been tempted to say it didn’t entirely surprise me. There was an unknowable side to Rupe, though whether Rupe himself was aware of it was another matter altogether.
Hoare was about to respond, when the coffee arrived. He paused to sign a chit, then poured for both of us. When the waitress had gone, he said, ‘I’ve known Rupe for seven years, Lance – as long as he’s been at Eurybia. But you’ve known him all your life. How would you sum him up?’
I thought for a moment, then tried. ‘Clever, relaxed, adaptable. A bit of a loner, but a good friend to me. Quite serious. Quite hard on himself. But with a wry, detached sense of humour.’
‘Capable of playing the game?’
‘Yes.’
‘But well aware that it is a game.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Mmm.’ Hoare sipped his coffee. ‘Well, I’d go along with all of that. It’s how he seemed to me. Good at keeping several balls in the air at the same time. And an excellent strategist. He did some good work for Eurybia. Developed some very lucrative business. Circularity’s the key to profit in shipping, Lance. It’s not just about plying the oceans. Our containers are transcontinental as well. Rupe cracked the Russian connection for us.’
‘He did?’
‘We have a lot of cargoes finishing in Scandinavia, not many starting. And it’s the other way round in the Far East. That means empty ships, which means empty coffers. Rupe handled a lot of negotiations with Russian industrialists to close the circle – send containers on through Russia to the Far East. That’s why we posted him to Japan – to smooth out that end of things.’
‘And did he smooth it out?’
‘Oh yes. At least, he started to. Then, suddenly, back in the summer, he resigned.’
‘Why?’
‘No idea.’ Hoare gave a crumpled grin. ‘Not at the time, anyway.’
‘But since?’
‘Well . . .’ He stirred uncomfortably in his seat. ‘That’s why I agreed to meet you, when it comes down to it. A chap resigns without giving a reason? It’s a free country. A freeish world. It seemed odd, even a bit curt. All we had was a fax from Tokyo. But Eurybia didn’t own him. We had no choice but to let him go. As of the thirty-first of August, he was off our books. And then . . . things started to happen. Weevils started crawling out of the woodwork.’
‘What sort of weevils?’
‘Do you know what a bill of lading is, Lance?’
I shrugged. ‘Not exactly.’
‘It’s a document of legal title, representing ownership of a cargo, issued by the shipper to the customer, who can use it as security against a loan if they wish. But where there’s a loan there can also be fraud, if the shipper can somehow be persuaded – or bribed – to issue more than one bill of lading per cargo. Then you might end up with several loans, all secured against the same cargo. Like Rupe did.’
‘You’re accusing Rupe of fraud?’
‘It’s pretty hard not to when there’s a Eurybia container sitting out at Tilbury with eighteen tons of high-grade Russian aluminium inside it, being wrangled over by lawyers representing half a dozen different Far Eastern banks, all claiming ownership in default of loans to a will-o’-the-wisp outfit called the Pomparles Trading Company.’
‘The what?’
‘Pomparles. Does the name mean something to you?’
‘Yeh. It would to any Street boy.’ Briefly, I explained the long-ago Arthurian tale of the Pons Perilis and its connection with the modern-day Pomparles Bridge. It brought a grin to Hoare’s lips.
‘Rupe’s little joke,’ he said when I’d finished. ‘He’s chairman, managing director, secretary, treasurer and bloody tea-boy of the Pomparles Trading Company. He knows the tricks of the trade as well as anyone. He issued multiple Eurybia bills of lading to his own company for a cargo of aluminium leaving Yokohama, bound for Tilbury. He used those bills of lading to raise loans. Then he resigned from Eurybia, took the money . . . and ran.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘I wish you didn’t have to. But it’s true. And damned embarrassing for Eurybia.’
‘Rupe’s no con artist.’
‘You don’t think so?’
‘Of course not.’ (Rupe had always been honest to a fault in my experience, pathetically obedient to drugs legislation and parking regulations.) ‘He just isn’t the type.’
‘Everyone’s the type. If they need to be. And that’s what I’m wondering. Did Rupe need to be?’
‘Why should he?’
‘You tell me, Lance.’
‘I can’t. Anyway, like I said, I don’t believe it. Besides . . .’
‘What?’ Hoare looked at me enquiringly as my mind tried to make a series of connections. What the bloody hell was Rupe up to? And why, if he was suddenly awash with ill-gotten cash, should he stop subsidizing life at Penfrith?
‘How much is this fraud likely to have netted?’
‘Well, banks tend to be coy about losses, of course, but eighteen tons of high-grade aluminium at today’s prices’ – he unfolded his FT – ‘equates to about . . . twenty thousand pounds. Multiply that by six bills of lading and you have . . . well, you can work it out.’
‘How much were Eurybia paying Rupe?’
‘You wouldn’t expect—’
‘Come on. Give me some idea.’
‘About sixty thousand. Plus bonuses and expenses.’
‘And set to rise – given how well he was doing?’
‘In all probability.’
‘Then surely it was never worth it.’
‘Not in the long run. But something obviously focused Rupe on the short run. That’s my point. And I think I can prove it.’
‘How?’
‘I’m going out to Tilbury tomorrow. Why don’t you join me?’ He lowered his voice mysteriously. ‘There’s someone I’d like you to meet.’
‘Who?’
‘Someone I reckon can convince you that Rupe really has put his straight-dealing days behind him. For good and all.’
I didn’t buy Charlie Hoare’s version of Rupe as archfraudster for a minute. But I wasn’t about to tell him that. Yes, I’d go out to Tilbury if he wanted me to. But I had no intention of letting myself be turned against a friend by whatever I was told when I got there. Bills of lading and the price of aluminium didn’t turn Rupe into a villain overnight. Not in my eyes, anyway.
Still, there was no denying that a lot of people were on Rupe’s trail, maybe all for the same reason. From St James’s Square I walked up to Park Lane and dropped into the Hilton. Mr Hashimoto was still staying there, but he was out. I left a message asking him to call me – ‘in connection with Mr Alder’ — and caught the bus back to Kennington.
Echo had gone out, leaving me free to search Rupe’s sitting room and bedroom for clues to his whereabouts. Naturally, there weren’t any. If Rupe was in hiding, he was clever enough to cover his tracks. And if he wasn’t . . . then he was probably in even worse trouble than Hoare seemed to think.
I soon gave up and concentrated on putting together a sardine sandwich instead (hoping Echo wouldn’t mind me raiding the cupboard). I called my parents to let them know where I was staying.
After writing down the address and phone number, Mum put Dad on, saying he was keen to speak to me, which had to be some kind of a first.
‘I visited the library today, son.’
‘Oh yeh?’
‘Reminding myself of those farming deaths round here back in ‘sixty-three. You said you’d like to know what I found out, so I photocopied some of the Gazette articles. Do you want me to send them on to you there?’
‘Is there anything interesting in them?’
‘Oh yes. I think you could say that.’
‘Such as what?’
‘Best you read them for yourself. I don’t want to be accused of colouring your judgement.’
‘Give me a break, Dad.’
‘Well, let’s just say there’s a surprising connection between two of the cases.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning Howard Alder. He found his father drowned in the Brue near Cow Bridge, not the Sedgemoor Drain, as I’d always understood.’ (Dad and me both. The Brue was the river spanned by Pomparles Bridge. Cow Bridge was the next crossing upstream, a favourite fishing spot for boys like Rupe and me. It was much closer to home than the Sedgemoor Drain. But nobody had ever said that was where Rupe’s father had met his end, least of all Howard.) ‘And he was the first to come across a farmer called Dalton after the poor fellow shot himself.’
This really was surprising. There was no denying it. ‘Could you send the articles on to me, Dad?’
‘I thought you’d want me to. Your mother has the address?’
‘Yeh.’
‘I’ll put them in the post first thing tomorrow.’
‘Thanks. One other thing . . .’ I hesitated. He wasn’t going to like this. ‘Could you do me another favour?’
‘What is it?’
‘Call in at Penfrith and tell the Alders how they can contact me.’
‘For God’s sake.’
‘They don’t have a phone, Dad. It’s either this or I send them a postcard. And they’re anxious for news.’
‘Maybe, but . . .’ A slowly yielding silence settled on the line. ‘All right. I’ll, er . . . send your mother.’
Echo still wasn’t back by half eight, when I headed round to the Pole Star. The lights were turned down, the music up. The place had slipped into evening mode, with a football match playing on a big-screen telly and lots of drinking straight from the bottle.
One piece of good news was that Carl wasn’t the barman sporting a tattooed mass of muscles, but his lanky, pasty-faced, hair-gelled colleague. ‘I’m Carl Madron,’ he said to me as he prised the bottle-tops off a multiple order of Mexican beer. ‘You the guy who was in earlier?’
‘Yeh. Lance Bradley. I’m a friend of Rupe Alder’s.’
‘That a fact?’
‘They tell me you know Rupe quite well.’
‘A bit.’
‘Any idea where he might be these days?’
‘No.’ He broke off to take some money, then gave me a fraction more of his attention. ‘If you’re a friend of his, why don’t you know where he is?’
‘I thought I did. But he seems to have—’
‘Disappeared?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Anyway, I’m not a mate of the guy. He used to come in here quite a lot. Early evening, mostly. We’d chat a bit. That’s about it.’
‘I had the impression it was, well, more than that.’
‘Did you?’
‘Just an impression.’
‘As it happens, I’m getting some grief over your friend. He’s let someone down.’
‘Oh yeh?’
‘Not a nice thing to do.’
‘Who is this “someone”?’
‘What’s it matter to you?’
‘I’m trying to find Rupe. His family are worried about him.’
‘They probably ought to be.’
‘You think so?’
‘You let people down, you get into trouble.’
‘Look, Carl . . .’
‘Tell you what.’ He fixed me with a dead-fish stare. ‘I could call that someone I mentioned. See if he wants to meet you.’
‘That’d be great.’
‘OK. When I get a chance. You’ll hang around?’
‘Yeh. ’Course. Thanks.’
‘Don’t overdo the thanks.’ His smile was no livelier than his stare. ‘You’ll be getting me off a hook.’
And myself onto one? The question hung in the noise and smoke around me. And it didn’t go away.
But it did get decidedly blurry. Two idle hours in a pub aren’t exactly good for my clarity of thought. By closing time, I was having trouble hanging on, never mind hanging around. That early start was still gouging away at me. Carl, on the other hand, was getting sharper all the time. He’d made the promised phone call, with favourable results.
‘Bill’ – the someone had half a name now – ‘says he’d like to see you.’ (Strangely, I’d thought it was me expressing a wish to see him, but never mind.) ‘Wait while we close up and I’ll take you round there.’ ‘Is it far?’
‘Far enough. But I’ve got wheels.’
‘Chauffeur service, then?’
‘That’s right, Lance.’ Carl grinned at me. As a chauffeur, he was well short on deference. ‘Door to fucking door.’
The car wasn’t the sort of thing you saw being lovingly buffed outside a Mayfair casino. It was a cramped rust-bucket, with sour-smelling blankets covering the seats. For a barman, though, I suppose it had the advantage that you could always be sure, come closing time, it would still be where you’d parked it.
We headed east, aiming, so Carl told me, for the Rotherhithe Tunnel. Bill Prettyman – his surname was casually donated somewhere along the way – lived in West Ham. ‘An old East End boy,’ according to Carl. ‘He can tell a few tales, can Bill.’
‘Tales about what?’
‘Vintage villainy. My dad knows him from way back. Famous as a hard man in his day. And famous as more than that to a few.’
‘Are you going to let me in on the secret?’
‘I’ll let Bill do that. He didn’t like me giving Rupe the lowdown on him, so I’d better mind my manners this time.’
‘What did Rupe want with him?’
‘Different question, same answer. Don’t worry.’ Carl winked at me, which was about as worrying as it could be. ‘He sounded as if he was in a talkative mood.’
I fell asleep before we’d plunged under the Thames and was woken, seemingly no more than a few seconds later, by the car spluttering into silence. We’d arrived at the foot of some shabby stump of high-rise housing called Gauntlet Point. (Actually, the L had dropped off the sign, but even in my far from fully alert condition it seemed obvious what the missing letter was.)
The night air was a shock to the system, I don’t mind admitting. A badly needed one, in fact. Carl led me in by a heavily reinforced side-door, pausing to press a button on the bell-panel. ‘Just to let him know we’re here,’ he explained, before starting up the urinal-scented stairs. ‘It’s only the third floor. And I wouldn’t recommend the lifts.’
Bill Prettyman’s residence lay at the far end of a concrete-parapeted landing. Halfway along, Carl paused for a word to the wise. ‘Watch what you say to Bill. He can be a bit touchy.’
‘But not feely, I hope.’
‘That’s another thing. Sense of humour. He hasn’t got one. Not a fucking trace.’
‘I’ll try to remember that.’
‘You won’t have to try very hard. He’s not been in the best of moods lately. Thanks to Rupe.’
‘What did Rupe do to him?’
But the only answer I got was Carl’s sodium-lit grin. Clearly, he just didn’t have the heart to spoil the suspense.
‘This him, is it?’ were Prettyman’s welcoming words as the door opened to our knock and his gaze slid past Carl and onto me. He was a short, pigeon-chested little man with a round, frowning face and pale blue eyes that sparkled like two beads of water amidst the arid creases of his skin. His head was shaven as closely as his jaw, doing nothing to soften the mangled jut of his sometime-broken nose. He was wearing a grubby vest and even grubbier tracksuit bottoms. I briefly considered reassuring him that there’d been no need to dress up for my visit.
‘I’m Lance Bradley,’ was actually my opener. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
‘Carl said you’re a friend of Alder.’
‘Rupe, yes.’ (Rupe and Bill not on first-name terms, it seemed. Was that good news or bad?) ‘I’m trying to find him.’
‘Better come in, then.’
We stepped inside and Carl closed the door. A smell hit me as he did so that I’d call a stench if I wanted to be unkind. As to its origins, my suspicions centred on the large, lank-furred dog eyeing me from the kitchen doorway at the end of the passage. I couldn’t have named the breed, but I reckoned I knew what it was bred for. God help any uninvited visitors to chez Prettyman.
It was just as well for my peace of mind that the dog didn’t follow us into the lounge. Not that he was missing much. Bill Prettyman lived with bare walls, cheap furniture and a huge wide-screen TV. Homely wasn’t the description that sprang to mind. At least the lounge smelled better than the passage, thanks mainly to a haze of cigar smoke. I’d have taken Bill for a roll-up man, but it was a panatella he’d left smouldering in a giant onyx ashtray on top of the TV. He picked it up and took a puff. ‘You boys want a drink?’
The choice looked to be Scotch or Scotch. We both chose Scotch. ‘Been up to anything exciting, Bill?’ Carl enquired as he sat down on the sofa and sipped his whisky.
‘I’m too old for excitement. All I want is a bit of comfort. Not too much to ask, is it?’
‘No,’ I chipped in. ‘Not at all.’
‘Looks like you’ve got plenty already.’ Bill glared at me. ‘The younger generation . . .’ He shook his head in despair at us. ‘What a fucking washout.’
‘Except for me, hey?’ said Carl. ‘Didn’t I say I was your best hope of news of Rupe?’
Bill’s expression suggested the point, was moot. ‘What are you after Alder for?’ he fired at me.
‘His family are worried about him. I’m trying to track him down.’
‘Purely out of the goodness of your heart?’
‘Something like that.’
‘And where is this . . . family?’
‘Street, in Somerset.’
‘Street?’ You’d have thought I’d said Baghdad by his reaction. The frown knotted itself into a scowl. ‘He grew up there?’
‘Him and me both.’
‘That’s how he knew, then. Fucking hell. I thought he was too young. He was, by rights. But he knew. He knew a sight more than he was telling.’
‘I’m not sure I—’
‘Where is he?’ Bill’s shout raised a bark from the kitchen. ‘Shut up,’ he bellowed. And the dog obeyed. Bill returned his attention to me. ‘What did you say your name was?’
‘Lance.’
‘Well, where is he, Lance? That’s what I want to know. Where is he and what’s he up to?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’
‘You’ve come to the wrong place, then, haven’t you?’
‘Why don’t you let Lance in on what this is about, Bill?’ put in Carl.
‘To save you the trouble later, you mean? I sometimes wish your dad had taken my advice and drowned you in a sack the day you were born.’
‘That’s not very nice, is it? I was only trying to do you a favour.’
‘Some favour.’
We seemed to be moving in a circle, so I tried to square it. ‘Does this have something to do with aluminium?’
They both turned slowly to look at me. And it was immediately obvious that this had nothing to do with aluminium. ‘What are you on, man?’ snorted Carl.
‘The wrong track, obviously.’
‘Yeh, track,’ said Carl with a smile. ‘That’s more like it. As in railway track.’
‘You may as well go ahead and fill him in, boy,’ growled Bill. ‘It’s an itch you just can’t stop scratching, ain’t it?’
‘Uncle Bill here is a big-time criminal, Lance.’ (Carl was all eager garrulousness now – the tale-teller off the leash.) ‘He had a hand in the most famous heist of the century. Well, the last century. The Great Train Robbery; August ‘sixty-three. You’re looking at one of the blokes who laid his hands on the three million quid in used fivers, back when three million quid could buy an Arab oil state outright.’
‘It was nearer two and a half million,’ Bill grudgingly corrected him. ‘And there were a fair few of us to take our whack. I didn’t come away with more than a hundred and fifty thou.’
‘Which would probably be worth three million today,’ Carl went on. ‘If you’d stuck it in the building society and led a sensible life.’
‘Yeh,’ said Bill. ‘That’s right. If. Life’s full of fucking ifs. And smartarses to tell you so.’
The Great Train Robbery? I was struggling to catch up, rather like the police back in August 1963. Even those of us still in our mother’s womb at the time knew that was when a gang of soon to be famous thieves stopped the Glasgow to London mail train one night in the middle of the Buckinghamshire countryside and robbed it of a medium-sized fortune in used banknotes that were on their way to the Royal Mint for incineration. Most of the gang had subsequently been caught and clobbered with thirty-year gaol sentences. Some of them had escaped and been caught again. There’d been books and films, rumours of proceeds never recovered and Moriarty types behind it all never identified. It had become part of the nation’s folklore. But Bill Prettyman? I’d never heard that name mentioned. And he certainly didn’t look like a Mr Big to me. Nor was he living like one. But that, of course, was exactly what he was griping about.
‘Bill had the good sense to keep his gloves on during the divvying up at Leatherslade Farm,’ said Carl. ‘The ones who were caught got careless with their fingerprints. But not our Bill. He got clean away with his share of the loot. Only to have it taken off him by smooth-talking con men over the next . . . well, how long did it take, Bill?’ Bill’s expression suggested he had no wish to go into details of his systematic fleecing. ‘Let’s settle for all too soon,’ Carl went on with a weak smile. ‘Which is why he finds himself passing his declining years in this rat-hole, unable even to strike a lucrative publishing deal in case the police come knocking at his door. The ones who were caught have served their time. The ones who got away . . . can’t afford to come clean.’
‘Maybe you should do a deal with a publisher,’ said Bill. ‘Gifted with the gab the way you are.’
‘And maybe I would. If I didn’t think you’d stick a knife in my gut before I got to spend the money.’
‘You’re wise to think that, son. Very wise.’
‘I don’t like to interrupt,’ I interrupted, ‘but what has this to do with Rupe?’
‘Good question,’ said Carl. ‘See, the thing is Rupe got me talking about the Great Train Robbery one night at the Pole Star and I, well, gave him the idea that I might know someone who was in on it. Nothing specific, mind. Nothing that laid a trail to Uncle Bill’s door. But . . . the hint was there. And Rupe was interested. Very interested. He knew a bit himself, apparently. He gave me a name. Asked me to mention it to . . . whoever it was I knew . . . and see if he’d like to meet up and hear more about what had happened to this guy.’
‘Who did he name?’
‘Fellow called Dalton.’ (Dalton? One of the suicidal Street farmers? I was way out of my depth now.) ‘Peter Dalton.’
‘Know of him, do you?’ Bill looked sharply at me.
‘No.’ (Well, it was almost the truth.) ‘Can’t say I do.’
‘Seems he was a member of the gang as well,’ said Carl, at which Bill gave a nod of confirmation. ‘Also never caught. In fact, never heard of again. Dropped right out of sight after the robbery.’ (Out of this whole vale of tears, in fact, assuming he was the dead farmer.) ‘And not just your standard gang member. No, no. Dalton was there on behalf of the gang’s prime informant – the mystery man who told them about the train and how much dosh might be aboard. He took an extra cut for his boss. Isn’t that right, Bill?’ Another nod. ‘Then vanished.’
‘What did Rupe know about him?’
‘That he was fucking dead,’ said Bill. ‘Dalton was found with his head blown off at some farm he owned, apparently. Near Street. Less than a fortnight after the robbery. Suicide, it was, according to the stuff from the paper Alder showed me. Suicide, my arse. Dead, and no trace of the money? Sounds more like he was rubbed out.’
‘Murdered?’
‘So Rupe reckoned,’ said Carl. ‘And he reckoned he knew who’d done it.’
‘Who?’
‘The mystery man. The source of the info.’
‘Why would he kill Dalton?’
‘To cover his tracks,’ said Bill, with no hint of irony. ‘Part of the plan all along, maybe. The cops were on to us that fast, boy. Too fast for fingerprints to be all they had. Somebody grassed us up. And who could have done it better than the bloke who set us up in the first fucking place?’
‘Whose identity you never knew?’
‘Not me. Not no one. Except Dalton.’
‘And Rupe,’ put in Carl.
‘Alder seemed to think he could flush him out,’ Bill continued. ‘He didn’t say how. Nor how he knew who he was. He said the bloke was called Stephen Townley and that he had . . . ways and means . . . of tracking him down. He reckoned he could force Townley to tell his story and make us all rich by selling it. He had a photo of Dalton, taken from the local rag down in Street. Once I said yeh, that was the same Dalton I’d last seen at Leatherslade back in August ’sixty-three, he seemed sure he could pull it off.’
‘He had a photograph of Townley as well,’ said Carl.
‘Said it was Townley,’ Bill corrected him.
‘Was Townley standing on a railway station in the picture?’ I asked.
‘Yeh.’ Bill gave me another sharp look. ‘How’d you know that?’
‘It’s pinned up in Rupe’s kitchen. The station’s not far from Street. Well, it wasn’t far, when it existed.’ (My mind was racing through sand. Rupe had no business knowing about any of this stuff. But he did. ‘Sure he could pull it off.’ I wondered if he was so sure now.) ‘When did you meet Rupe, Bill?’
‘It’s got to be . . . a couple of months.’ (That put it during Rupe’s last ‘flying visit’ to London.) ‘Which is twice as long as he said he’d need to sort Townley.’
‘Maybe Townley proved more elusive than Rupe had anticipated.’
‘Or maybe he did a deal with Townley and froze me out. Maybe all he wanted me to do was ID Dalton and tie the fucking string on his blackmail package.’
‘You can see Bill’s point,’ said Carl. ‘It does look like that.’
‘Rupe’s no blackmailer.’ (But he was, if Bill was to be believed. That’s exactly what he was. Or what he was going to be, if and when he tracked Townley down. Why? He couldn’t be in this for the money. Not this and the aluminium too.) ‘There has to be some . . . misunderstanding.’
‘There’s no misunderstanding,’ said Bill, with heavy emphasis. ‘He promised me a cut of whatever he made out of Townley.’
‘Me too,’ said Carl, which drew a fleeting glare from Bill.
‘And now he’s done a runner,’ the old man resumed. (Bill’s conclusion was much the same as Charlie Hoare’s, it seemed.) ‘So, when you find your friend, tell him he owes me. And I want paying.’
‘Sure. If I find him.’
‘Any leads?’ Carl enquired.
‘One or two. Not very promising, I’m afraid.’
‘You’ll keep us posted, though, if they come to anything?’
‘Certainly. I want to sort this out as much as you do.’
‘That a fact?’
‘Yeh.’
‘But is it a promise?’ growled Bill.
‘If you like.’
‘I do like.’
‘Then it’s a promise.’
‘Good. I’m partial to promises.’ He eyed me through a puff of panatella smoke. ‘I can hold people to them, see? And I do. Whether they want to be held to them . . . or not.’
‘You know, Lance,’ Carl said some time later, as we started back towards Kennington in his car, ‘for a guy who claims to be Rupe’s best mate, you don’t seem exactly . . . over-familiar with his character.’
‘You’re a better judge of it, are you?’ I countered, though Carl’s point was a valid one, God knows. Good old law-abiding career-ladder Rupe seemed to have turned to skullduggery with all the enthusiasm of a late convert.
‘I’m just telling it like it is. My guess is Rupe had a whole load of stuff on friend Townley. Bill didn’t give him anything except confirmation of one suspicion.’
‘What did he tell you and Bill about Townley? Townley as he is today, I mean.’
‘Nothing. Not a fucking thing.’
‘Didn’t you ask?’
‘Bill did. But Rupe clammed up.’
‘And you didn’t try to prise him open?’
‘You’ve got me all wrong, Lance.’ He cast me a leery glance through a wash of amber streetlight. ‘I’m not the heavy type.’
‘That’s reassuring.’
‘It’s not meant to be. The way I figure it, this Townley has to be a real hard case to have pulled off that stuff in ‘sixty-three. Too hard for Rupe to tackle any way he chose to go about it. I don’t want to dash Bill’s hopes – he’s got fuck all else to keep him going – but Rupe isn’t coming back with a fat pay-off to share out.’
‘What do you reckon’s happened to him, then?’
Carl gave the question a moment’s thought, then said, ‘Not sure, but . . . nothing good.’