Chapter Two

Hunter’s television programme was called ‘Bill Hunter – Personal Investigator,’ and it had a subsidiary heading tacked on: ‘Presents the News Behind the News.’ The programme ran for a quarter of an hour each week, and consisted simply of an unscripted interview with some celebrated or notorious person. There were, however, unusual features about it. Most programmes billed as ‘unscripted’ are so only in name – the protagonists have discussed very thoroughly in advance the course that the programme is to take. Hunter, however, had stipulated from the start that he should not meet his subject in advance, or discuss a line of questioning with him. The questions might be disconcerting, the answers might come as a surprise to Hunter. The programme therefore rightly appeared to viewers as a battle of wits.

This impression was enhanced by the fact that the people interviewed had always a slightly gamey flavour about them. They were film stars famous for the number or nature of their love affairs, generals suddenly sacked or demoted, extreme Left or Right wing politicians, surprisingly rich American trade unionists, organisers of nudist colonies, former members of secret societies devoted to violence. To the watchers sitting comfortably in their armchairs it seemed that the people interviewed were being ruthlessly quizzed by a Personal Investigator who had discovered a complete range of skeletons in their cupboards.

In fact, the questions were all based upon the material unearthed by Hunter’s research assistant Charlie Cash, and Charlie’s research rarely went beyond industrious digging in old newspaper cuttings plus the fruits of intelligent guesswork from conversations with friends around Fleet Street. Occasionally questions based on Charlie’s speculations provoked unexpected reactions, and the person interviewed got really annoyed. These were the moments when the watchers in suburban semis wriggled most deliciously in their overstuffed armchairs, the moments that fixed the Personal Investigator in their minds as an inquisitorial father figure extracting secrets from mentally-tortured victims. The idea was seven-eighths illusion, but then, as Hunter sometimes reflected, wasn’t the whole apparatus and effect of TV designed to create an illusion? The difference between TV and the cinema, he had once heard someone say, was that while both created legendary figures, the cinema did not try to deny that they were fabulous while TV pretended that they were just homebodies like you and me.

Reality faced him now, however, reality quite undeniable, in the shape of Charlie Cash sitting across the table from him in Charlie’s little Fleet Street office, a dusty cubicle filled with law and reference books, quite remote from Jerry Wilton’s splendour of glass walls and chromium fittings. Charlie sat behind a table spilling over with papers. He had a long thin nose, sloping shoulders, and the hungry look of a good research man. He twisted a toothpick in his mouth.

‘Here’s the stuff on Nick the Greek.’ He handed over two large envelopes marked A and B. The first contained facts, the second what Charlie called his intelligent guesswork. There would be a separate page for each story, and appended to the story would be a note from Charlie about its origins and possible use. Charlie, with the aid of a secretary, gave this kind of service to a dozen people, and got well paid for it.

‘Is he a Greek?’

‘He’s rich, a crook, a commercial genius. Must be a Greek or an Armenian or a Jew, isn’t that right, statistics can’t lie. Anyway they say he carries a Greek passport, though there seems to be a bit of mystery about it.’

‘How does it strike you?’

Charlie looked down his long nose. ‘Not too good.’

‘Jerry thought we were on to a winner.’

‘Jerry believes what he reads in the papers. He doesn’t know a tiger from pussy. This Mekles is a nasty piece of work.’

‘We’ve handled nasty pieces of work before now.’

‘Yes, but this is different. The stuff about our friend Nick that Jerry is thinking of is really old hat. That girl who fell off the yacht, for instance, Lindy Powers –’

‘The film actress?’

‘That’s what they called her. She had a bit part in a B film, then lay around Hollywood until Mekles picked her up. Anyway, the press did that to death at the time. If you want to give it another going over, you can, but it’s stale stuff. Same with a lot of the rest of it. There was a story that he had some famous stolen paintings in his villa on the Riviera. Mekles showed reporters round, turned out the paintings had been bought through art dealers, only he’d bought shrewdly and cheaply. That sort of thing.’

‘Do you mean we haven’t got a story?’

‘You’ve got a story, only I don’t see how you’re going to tell it without landing up to your neck in slander. And other trouble too, I dare say. Nasty revengeful type friend Nick is said to be.’

‘What’s the story, then?’

‘There are half a dozen, and they’re all poison. You know the international groups controlling tarts are supposed to have taken a knock since the Messina brothers were put inside? So that the import of French tarts into Britain by marriages of convenience almost stopped, for instance? Well, in the last few months the organisation has got a lot tighter again. Mekles is said to be one of two or three people controlling it. Then drugs – he’s said to have both the import-export and the distribution ends tied up. It’s distribution that’s the problem as you know, getting the stuff into and out of the country is easy here, not like the States. Fake antiques is another sideline – there’s still a ready sale for them in the States, though Americans have smartened up a lot in the last few years and look twice at worm holes made with a drill. But Mekles has an east end factory turning out the stuff.’

‘Let’s get down to cases, Charlie. How much of this can I use?’

Charlie dropped the toothpick into a waste basket, picked another. ‘I thought I’d made that plain. None of it.’

‘None of it?’

‘I don’t see how you can. It’s all B stuff. I know it, but there’s no proof. Take the factory. It runs as a perfectly straight concern, making cheap furniture that falls to bits when you use it. Now, a pal of mine named Jack Foldol, a bookie’s tout, knows the manager at this factory, a White Pole, if you know what I mean, named Kosinsky. One day Kosinsky told him about the other stuff they made, and the prices they got for it. Kosinsky also said that one day Myerson, that’s the man who’s supposed to own the place, had made a terrific fuss about an important conference, cleared everyone out of the place. Kosinsky was curious, managed to hang around, saw Mekles arrive, recognised him from newspaper photographs. Kosinsky hasn’t any doubt it was Mekles, heard a little bit of what they were saying, enough to know that Mekles was giving Myerson orders.’

‘If it was Mekles.’

‘That’s what I mean. It’s all hearsay stuff. I told you you couldn’t use it.’

‘Does Mekles come here often? From the way Jerry spoke I thought this was a first visit.’

‘Hell, no, he’s been in England a dozen times. Why should they keep him out, he’s a solid citizen. It’s a headache, and I’m glad it’s yours.’

Hunter nodded, took the envelopes. He had, even now, no warning presentiment. He had made good programmes out of less promising material.

‘How’s Anna?’ It was a question Charlie never forgot to ask. ‘That’s a great little woman, Bill. One of these days I’m going to come along and take her away from you. In the meantime, don’t forget to kiss her foot for me, will you?’